Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
It turns out that it is far easier for humans to critique design options that
are offered to them than it is for them to design from scratch. While you prob-
ably can't design a house from the ground up, you can easily point to houses
that you like and don't like. A good architect will listen to you and from your
feedback, and within a few iterations, produce a house to your liking. People
bred dogs for centuries without understanding animal genetics; farmers bred
corn long before they understood plant genetics. We can breed complex things
without understanding how they work.
Endless Forms demonstrates how computers and interactive design software
introduce a new dimension to creative work. Two pioneers of computer art,
Stephen Todd and William Latham, describe a computer-based artistic pro-
cess as one that takes place in “two stages: creation and gardening. The artist
irst creates the systems of the virtual world, applying whatever physical and
biological rules he chooses: light, color, gravity, growth and evolution, and
other rules of his own invention. The artist then becomes a gardener within
this world he has created; he selects and breeds sculptural forms as a plant
breeder produces lowers.”
1
The language of shapes
Getting human designers and computers to creatively and seamlessly work
together remains one of the biggest challenges in design for 3D printing. A
related issue is less visible to our human eyes, but still as essential. To make
better use of a 3D printer's production capacity, computers need to learn to
improve how they “think shape.”
Humans parse, record and often think about reality by capturing it in spo-
ken and written language. A culture's language relects its values and physical
environment. Skilled speakers use complicated grammars and deploy a massive
and colorful vocabulary. Other speakers loosely string simple words together in
a crude and poorly organized, ungrammatical skein of words.
Instead of using language, design software parses and records external real-
ity by capturing and keeping track of data that describes a physical object. A
more technical term for the way design software digitally captures an object
is as a “geometric representation.”
Design software of the future, like a child learning language, will gradu-
ally become more luent in depicting shapes. The successful development of a
child relies on it learning to speak smoothly in a way that's responsive to the
