teaching machines

Madeup Status Report #5

August 26, 2015 by . Filed under madeup, public.

The summer is drawing to a close. Madeup has come a long way since May! Some big features remain (like support for holes, a persistent server for generating models, and some support for splines), but the core path-walking mechanic is stable and enough hands have touched it and not founding glaring errors that I think I’m ready to share. But first, we need a little more documentation.

Read about the latest changes below, and check out the model of the fortnight!

Fixlog

Model of the Fortnight

A fellow down the hall invited me to a birthday party for his two-year-old daughter. I had never met her, but I wanted to bring her a gift. The bakery where I like to find these kinds of gifts was closed, so I needed a plan B. That one didn’t turn out either. It wasn’t until plan H that I remembered our 3D printer.

The girl’s name is Hillary. I decided to make her an H-box. My first thought was to make it in Madeup, but a first attempt didn’t go so well. I switched to Blender. There I used the text tool to make an H and then extruded it up, but I couldn’t find an easy way to do an “inner extrude” to make the top lip of the box you see below.

A box for Hillary.

A box for Hillary.

A regular extrude followed by a scale didn’t yield a wall with a constant thickness. At this point, I realized that Madeup was the only way to go. I wrote a very parameterized function to trace out an H and then called it four times to trace out the box:

to h params
  ...
end

draw bottom outer h
draw top outer h
draw top inner h
draw bottom inner h

Then I called the surface solidifier which hooked all four paths together and the box appeared! Four more calls and I had a lid.

Happy birthday, Hillary!