SketchingMetal: From Gestural Design to Automated Manufacturing of Metal Parts

This paper introduces a prototype system, SketchingMetal, that enables individuals with no manufacturing expertise to quickly design a restricted domain of precise, manufacturable, three-dimensional geometric models. Unlike previous systems that generate plastic prototypes from more general geometric models, models created with SketchingMetal can be manufactured automatically as functional machined metal parts without the intervention of a manufacturing expert. To support automatic manufacturing and rapid, precise geometric design, SketchingMetal demonstrates the effectiveness of a gestural user interface in a real 3D solid modeling applicatation and also introduces a technique for incrementally translating a restricted set of 3D geometric models to fully-specified machinable feature-based models. SketchingMetal’s user interface infers from user gestures both low-level 2D and 3D geometric primitives and also geometric constraints between primitives. In addition, SketchingMetal’s user interface (UI) presents a drag-and-drop spreadsheet paradigm for establishing precise numerical relationships between dimensions of the geometric model. As geometric models are interactively refined through this UI, SketchingMetal incrementally updates a second representation of the model composed of mechanical features. For more detailed control of these features, users may switch back and forth between modifying the geometric and feature-based model representations. Although SketchingMetal’s user interace and manufacturing contributions could be implemented independently, they are particularly powerful in combination. We demonstrate that even in its current, early stage of development, SketchingMetal allows a user without manufacturing expertise to create precise mechanical designs that can be manufactured as functional machined metal parts in only a matter of hours. CR