Digital fabrication has led to architectural innovation by allowing designs to be precisely translated from virtual models to physical buildings. It integrates the design and manufacturing processes using computer-controlled machines. Pioneers like Gehry Partners have exploited this to construct uniquely shaped buildings that were previously unbuildable. Digital fabrication tools include laser cutters, CNC mills, 3D printers, and large-scale robotic fabricators, integrating computational design with on-site construction.

2. :Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication
Date: April 10, 2017
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3. Digital Fabrication
Lisa Iwamoto
Digital Fabrications, Architectural and Material Techniques
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

4. Digital Fabrication
Lisa Iwamoto
Digital Fabrications, Architectural and Material Techniques
Digital fabrication has spurred a design revolution, yielding a wealth of architectural
invention and innovation.
Designs use digital fabrication and material techniques to calibrate between virtual model
and physical artifact
Digital practices have the potential to narrow the gap between representation and building,
affording a hypothetically seamless connection between design and making.
Digital fabrication is often one of the final stages of design process, and it is very much what
it sounds like: a way of making that uses digital data to control a fabrication process.
Falling under the umbrella of computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM), it
relies on computer driven machine tools to build or cut parts.
CAD/CAM has been a mainstay of industrial design and engineering and of manufacturing
industries-particularly the automotive and aerospace industries-for more than a half
century.
Scaled models are made quickly, using rapid-prototyping machines that turn out accurate
physical models from the computerized data.
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

5. Digital Fabrication
Lisa Iwamoto
Digital Fabrications, Architectural and Material Techniques
Once the computer model is refined and completed, the data are transferred to computer-
controlled machines that make full-scale parts and molds from a range of materials such as
aluminum, steel, wood, and plastics.
processes that are typically compartmentalized, often eliminating intermediate steps
between design and final production.
There is the potential for architecture also to move more fluidly between design and
construction.
… CAD replaced drawing with a parallel rule and lead pointer, but buildings looked pretty
much the same. This is perhaps not so surprising-one form of two-dimensional
representation simply replaced another. It took three-dimensional-computer modeling
and digital fabrication to energize design thinking and expand the boundaries of
architectural form and construction.
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

6. Digital Fabrication
Lisa Iwamoto
Digital Fabrications, Architectural and Material Techniques
… inventiveness in design/ architectural has to do in part with restructuring the very process
of construction. The work of Gehry Partners and its associated firm Gehry Technologies has
played a pivotal role in this regard.
Gehry's office began using CAD/CAM processes in 1989 to develop and then test the
constructability of a building system for the Disney Concert Hall.
…Gehry's office adapted software from the aerospace industry, CATIA (Computer Aided
Three Dimensional Interactive Application), to model the entire exterior of the concert hall.
This building method revealed that the complexities and uniqueness of surface geometries
did not significantly affect fabrication costs, and it is this realization, that one can make a
series of unique pieces with nearly the same effort as it requires to mass-produce identical
ones, that forms a significant aspect of the computer-aided manufacturing that has since
been exploited for design effect.
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

7. Digital Fabrication
Lisa Iwamoto
Digital Fabrications, Architectural and Material Techniques
Gehry Technologies now acts as a consultant to Gehry Partners, as well as to other
architects, assisting with digital construction and management. The company is
revolutionary in that it expands the role of the architect to include oversight of the building
and construction-management process, much as it was in the age of the master builder.
…the digital environment allows architects to take control of the building process…
In addition to Gehry's, architectural offices such as Foster & Partners, Nicholas Grimshaw,
and Bernhard Franken are forging similar integrated project-delivery methods for large,
complex projects.
Michael Speaks has termed "design intelligence": "Making becomes knowledge or
intelligence creation. In this way thinking and doing, design and fabrication, and prototype
and final design become blurred, interactive, and part of a non-linear means of innovation.
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

8. Digital Fabrication
Lisa Iwamoto
Digital Fabrications, Architectural and Material Techniques
Rather than construct the surface itself, sectioning uses a series of profiles, the edges of
which follow lines of surface geometry. The modeling software's sectioning or contouring
commands can almost instantaneously cut parallel sections through objects at designated
intervals.
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

9. Digital Fabrication
Lisa Iwamoto
Digital Fabrications, Architectural and Material Techniques
Sectioning: Digital Weave
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

10. Digital Fabrication
Lisa Iwamoto
Digital Fabrications, Architectural and Material Techniques
Sectioning: Digital Weave
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

11. Digital Fabrication
Lisa Iwamoto
Digital Fabrications, Architectural and Material Techniques
Sectioning: Digital Weave
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

12. Digital Fabrication
Lisa Iwamoto
Digital Fabrications, Architectural and Material Techniques
Sectioning: Digital Weave
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

13. Digital Fabrication
Lisa Iwamoto
Digital Fabrications, Architectural and Material Techniques
Sectioning: Digital Weave
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

14. Digital Fabrication
Digital fabrication integrates the manufacturing process from conception to production into
one single chain. The chain begins with the use of CAD (Computer Assisted Design) and
CAM (Computer Assisted Manufacture) software; resulting designs are constructed with
the use of numerically controlled hardware. This is by no means a recent development;
Gershenfeld5 reminds us that computers were being hooked up to machines at MIT in
the 1950s. Heavy industry has been using this process on assembly lines for years, while
mechatronics centers where small businesses can build rapid prototypes exist
worldwide. FABLAB
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15. Digital Fabrication
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

16. Digital Fabrication
SAFETY (Discuss)
TOOLS AND MACHINES
Epilog Laser
ShopBot
Roland Milling Machine
CAMM-1 Servo GX-24 Desktop
Vinyl Cutter
Scroll Saw
Surface Mount Rework
…
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

17. Digital Fabrication
TOOLS AND MACHINES
Laser cutter
• Cuts a wide variety of materials (wood, paper, cardboard, PMMA, leather, etc.)
• Marking (metal, aluminium, stone, etc.)
• Engraving (engraving is deeper than marking) €15,000-€30,000 depending on laser
strength
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

18. Digital Fabrication
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

19. Digital Fabrication
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

20. Digital Fabrication
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

21. Digital Fabrication
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

22. Digital Fabrication
CNC milling machine
• Mills (removing/cutting away of material according to a specific design) a variety of
materials (wood, foam, light metals, etc.)
• Creates moulds
• Printed circuit board (PCB) milling (epoxy coated with adhesive copper film)
• Some function as 3D “scanners” by replacing the mill with a sensor €3,000-€5,000
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

23. Digital Fabrication
3 Axis router/spindle
• Woodworking mill (solid wood)
• Large-volume mould creation
• Applications similar to the CNC milling machine but with added security €14,000-€20,000
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

24. Digital Fabrication
3 Axis router/spindle
• Accuracy. Repeatability .Spindle and axis motor horsepower. Number of controlled axes
.Dimension of workspace .Features of the machine and the controller
stepping motor/
Servo motor(discuss)
DC motor (discuss)
G-code (discuss)
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

25. Digital Fabrication
Vinyl cutter
• Cuts various materials including vinyl, certain papers, heat transfer films, decals, and
certain fabrics
• Cuts adhesive copper film for PCB manufacture €1,500-€2,500
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

26. Digital Fabrication
3D Printer
• 3D Object “printing” on demand
• Meld creation
• Prototyping €2,000-€50,000
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27. Digital Fabrication
Other big scale
fabrications
In situ Fabricator
(construction robot) is
fabricating a doubly
curved mesh structure
during a fabrication test
on the Empa NEST
building in Duebendorf,
Switzerland. Credit:
Photo: NCCR Digital
Fabrication and ETH
Zurich
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

28. Digital Fabrication
Other big scale
fabrications
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

29. Digital Fabrication
Other big scale
fabrications
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

30. Digital Fabrication
Other big scale
fabrications
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF

31. Digital Fabrication
Lisa Iwamoto
Digital Fabrications, Architectural and Material Techniques
Sectioning: Digital Weave
:Computational Design and
Digital Fabrication DF