Agile structural analysis for fabrication-aware shape editing

This paper presents an agile simulation-aided shape editing system for personal fabrication applications. The finite element structural analysis and geometric design are seamlessly integrated within our system to provide users interactive structure analysis feedback during mesh editing. Observing the fact that most editing operations are actually local, a domain decomposition framework is employed to provide unified interface for shape editing, FEM system updating and shape optimization. We parameterize entries of the stiffness matrix as polynomial-like functions of geometry editing parameters thus the underlying FEM system can be rapidly synchronized once edits are made. A local update scheme is devised to re-use the untouched parts of the FEM system thus a lot repetitive calculations are avoided. Our system can also perform shape optimizations to reduce high stresses in model while preserving the appearance of the model as much as possible. Experiments show our system provides users a smooth editing experience and accurate feedback.