The objective of my talk is to introduce the audience to the exciting
field of computational fabrication. The recent, wide availability of 3D
printers has triggered considerable interest in academia and industry.
Computer scientists could engage with hands-on 3D printing and very soon
realize the immense but untapped potential of the manufacturing industry
for computational methods.
In this talk, I will explain the principles of 3D printing (also known
as additive manufacturing) both from hardware and software viewpoints. I
will then show examples of recent research addressing computational
problems in both 3D printing and general manufacturing. I will also
discuss my main research interest, i.e. computational fabrication of
visual appearance. Appearance of objects is among their most important
and most complicated properties that influence or in numerous cases
define their function. I show that additive manufacturing provides
unprecedented opportunities to create products with novel and useful
appearance properties.