Modeling and fabrication of artistic products based on IFS fractal representation

Contemporary computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) theories and systems are well developed for analytical and free-form objects, but neither can deal with all artistically appealing objects efficiently. Artistically appealing objects are common in, for example, jewellery and furniture decoration. Therefore, it is valuable to explore more suitable modeling and manufacturing method for artistically appealing objects.Fractal geometry has been employed for modeling natural objects that cannot be described easily by Euclidean geometry. In this paper, one type of fractal solid — the Iterated Function System (IFS) fractal — is proposed for modeling artistically appealing objects in a computational form. A Radial-Blossoming Tree (RBT) data structure is worked out for fractal solid modeling in a CAD platform. Traversal algorithms have been devised to extract necessary information from the RBT for generating the toolpath for a layered manufacturing (LM) process, so that a physical fractal object can be built and the fabrication of a fractally represented artistic product can be realized.