After successful completion of the course, students are able to:

• Understand available fabrication technologies, their strengths and limitations
• Utilize CAD software to produce customized, fabricable designs
• Understand and apply common strategies for numerical optimization
• Understand the basics of numerical simulation of physical phenomena
• Have an overview of the  state-of-the-art in computational fabrication
• Independently solve a fabrication problem using computational tools

• Overview of 3D printing techniques, available materials, material modeling, printing pipeline, shortcomings
• Introduction to CAD design
• Numerical Optimization
• Physical Simulation
• Appearance Reproduction
• Topological Optimization

The course consists of the following elements:

• oral lectures that formalize the general concepts, and describe the current state-of-the-art in the field
• a semester-long group project where the students will be tasked to implement a fabrication paper of their (and our) choice
• a small assignment at the start for CAD design. This assignment will allow the students to solidify their knowledge of CAD

Results of a small project and one larger group project

Knowledge of numerical optimization is an advantage but not required