Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
The computer came up with a novel design for a bookshelf bracket that
looked nothing like the right-angled brackets you can buy in your local home
supplies store. Its suggested design was a ibrous tangle of materials wrapped
around a few beautifully shaped internal cavities. I don't think that I could have
designed such an organically-shaped (and optimized) design using today's
software design tools. There's no way I could have made this bracket by hand,
given the weight and material capacities the computer had to consider.
Someday design will be done by matter compilers that generate the best structure
for a given objective and then 3D print it. Starting with volume constraint (left), the
compiler produced an optimal bracket to hold three bars.
What will happen in the future, when intelligent computers learn to bridge
the gap between what humans need and what multi-material printers can
make? The result will be next-generation design software, or what I like to
call a “matter compiler.”
The term matter compiler was coined by science fiction author Neal
Stephenson. In his novel
The Diamond Age,
the topic's characters tell their mat-
ter compilers what to fabricate and in a moment or two, they'd pull a plastic
mattress or food or a irearm from the machine. Stephenson's matter compilers
were not 3D printers, of course; they were “nano-assemblers” that re-arranged
atoms streamed from a central “feed.” Nor could they design new things; like
the
Star Trek
Replicator, they were limited to replicating what already existed.
The true promise of a matter compiler is that it would combine the power of
artiicial intelligence with 3D printing. First, the artiicial intelligence would
apply algorithms to automatically “compile” high-level human-provided
requirement into an optimal design, suitable for 3D printing. The 3D printer
would then realize the design physically. Put together, such a matter compiler
would enable us to design new objects that do not yet exist.
Perhaps a more adequate analogy to our kind of matter compiler is a tradi-
tional software compiler. A software compiler translates a high level computer
