Cover-it: an interactive system for covering 3d prints

The ubiquity of 3D printers has made it possible to print various types of objects, from toys to mechanical objects. However, most available 3D printers are single or double colors. Even printers that can produce objects with multiple colors do not offer the ability to cover the object with a desired material, such as a piece of cloth or fur. In this paper, we propose a system that produces simple 2D patches that can be used as a reference for cutting material to cover the 3D printed object. The system allows for user interactions to correct and modify the patches, and provides guidelines on how to wrap the printed object via small curves illustrating the patch boundaries etched on the printed object as well as an animation showing how the 2D patches should be folded together. To avoid wasting materials, a heuristics method is also employed to pack 2D patches in the layout. To compensate the effect of inflation resulted from covering objects with thick materials, an offsetting tool is provided in Cover-it. In addition, since many low scale details of an object is not visible after covering, a mesh can be simplified in Cover-it to reduce the number of 2D patches.