Interactive Modeling of Support-free Shapes for Fabrication

Abstract

We introduce an interactive sculpting approach that enables modeling of support-free objects: objects which do not require any support structures during 3D printing. We propose three operators - trim, preserve, grow - to maintain the support-free property during interactive modeling. These operators let us define brushes that perform either in an unconstrained manner (adapting the shape to the brush effect), or selectively discard changes inside the brush volume. Our technique can be applied to many modeling operations and we demonstrate it on brushes for adding or removing matter. We describe an efficient implementation of a voxel-based modeling tool that produces only support-free shapes, and show example shapes modeled within minutes.