Software that facilitates construction of precise free-form structures from sheet material
Designed by Paul Haeberli, Lamina 1.0 software facilitates the fabrication of large-scale free-form structures from planar materials like plastic, metal, or plywood. This fabrication technology can be applied to interior design, architecture, lighting, signage, and sculpture.
Lamina 1.0 uses a computer process to build precise physical structures. A user’s 3D model is approximated by a number of 2D parts that are numerically cut and attached to fabricate the final structure. Laser-cutting, abrasive water jet-cutting and plasma-cutting services are widely available and make creating parts inexpensive and fast.
This software accounts for the physical behavior of planar materials and uses the material thickness to inset the edges of cutting paths to make parts that fit together with precision. Where parts join at right angles, the inset for an edge to edge joint is half the material thickness. The angle between parts is also taken into consideration when generating cutting path insets; thus, the join angle and the appropriate inset may vary along edges. A demo version of the program can be downloaded from the web site.
Contact: Lamina Design, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
For more information, see Transmaterial: A Catalog of Materials That Redefine our Physical Environment
