Design - especially of physical objects - can be understood as creative acts solving practical problems. In this paper we describe a biologically-inspired developmental model as the basis of a generative form-finding system. Using local interactions between cells in a two-dimensional environment, then capturing the state of the system at every time step, complex three-dimensional (3D) forms can be generated by the system. Unlike previous systems, our method is capable of directly producing 3D printable objects, eliminating intermediate transformations and manual manipulation often necessary to ensure the 3D form is printable. We devise fitness measures for optimising 3D printability and aesthetic complexity and use a Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolutionary Strategies algorithm (CMA-ES) to find 3D forms that are both aesthetically interesting and physically printable using fused deposition modelling printing techniques. We investigate the system's capabilities by evolving and 3D printing objects at different levels of structural consistency, and assess the quality of the fitness measures presented to explore the design space of our generative system. We find that by evolving first for aesthetic complexity, then evolving for structural consistency until the form is 'just printable', gives the best results.
翻译:设计,特别是物理物体的设计,可以被理解为解决实际问题的创造性行为。在本文中,我们将生物启发型发展模型描述为基因化形式调查系统的基础。使用二维环境中的细胞之间的局部互动,然后通过系统每一步捕捉系统状态,系统可以生成复杂的三维(3D)形式。与以往的系统不同,我们的方法能够直接生产3D可打印对象,消除中间转换和手工操作,这往往是确保3D形式可以打印所必需的。我们设计了最佳3D打印和美学复杂性的健身措施,并使用了组合矩阵适应进化战略算法(CMA-ES)来发现3D形式,这些形式既有趣,又物理上可以使用组合式的沉积模拟印刷技术打印。我们通过在不同层次的结构一致性上演化和打印3D天体来调查系统的能力,并评估为探索我们基因化系统的设计空间而提出的健身措施的质量。我们发现,通过首先对美学复杂性进行演化,然后对结构一致性进行演化,直到“可直接打印”才产生最佳结果。