Boolean Utilities
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. Composing boolean meshes is a complex task that requires time and knowledge exceeding the bounds of this camp. Instead of implementing the boolean operations yourself, you will use a library […]
Fabrication Summer Camp: Day 5
Welcome to the fifth day of our summer camp! Today is different than the others. It’s Laser-Cutter Day. You challenge is to spend the morning making a design that you want to last. In the afternoon we will take your designs to the Fabrication Lab and cut them out of acrylic. There are a few […]
Range-mapping
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. When you go to the doctor’s office, you may see a chart on the wall suggesting different ways of measuring the severity of your pain. Consider this chart, for example, […]
Extrude
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. You’ve now made two flat shapes. Suppose you took one of the shapes and stretched it into the third dimension to produce a solid rod or dowel. That stretching is […]
Plus
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. The next shape that you will add to your library of shapes is a plus sign. Like the star, you will start off making this a flat shape. Later on […]
Star
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. Let’s regress back to two dimensions momentarily. Your next several shapes will start off flat. Later we will extend or extrude these flat shapes into the third dimension. Your first […]
Spiral
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. To make a torus, you took a circle and rotated it around the y-axis. What would happen if on each step of the rotation you also tugged the rotated circle […]
Torus
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. Rings are a big deal. We coat them in sugar and eat them for a snack. We commit to a partner with one. We drive on two or four or […]
Fabrication Summer Camp: Day 4
Welcome to the fourth day of our summer camp! Laser and vinyl cutters create flat objects. Today we break out of the flat plane into the third dimension. In order to cut these objects with our tools, they must start out flat. But the objects can be folded and assembled into solid shapes. Solid objects […]
Capsule
This post is part of a course on geometric modeling at the Summer Liberal Arts Institute for Computer Science held at Carleton College in 2021. Suppose you grabbed the North Pole, somehow, and I grabbed the South Pole. And then we pulled on the poles. What shape would we get? Earth would look like a […]