The rise of personal fabrication presents a future where there are 3D printers in every home and community, empowering people to design, build and iterate solutions that fit their own needs. While the production technologies are rapidly becoming more accessible, the tools for creation on these platforms are still mostly developed for domain experts.

Moreover, transferring an idea from imagination to real life can be limited by confidence and capacity to mentally model the creations in three-dimensional space. How might we improve this capacity and build confidence in these mental models?

TADCAD addresses this by providing a new interaction paradigm for 3D modeling. TADCAD is a gestural and tangible modeling platform for 3D printing. It recognizes 3D printed shapes on a build field that can be transformed using hand gestures. The transformations are seen in real time in an augmented reality view of the build field. The new creation can then be 3D printed.

Ultimately, the platform’s vision is to allow the creations to be built upon again and again; the system bridges tangible interaction with 3D printing in a way that facilitates the design process and iteration loop. TADCAD has been developed in the same spirit of maker education: to work in the platform, you build your own learning tools.

The current prototype of TADCAD involves a webcam attached to an LED lamp, a game controller with a leap motion sensor, and 3D printed pieces with fiducial markers for identification. This prototype is helpful as a starting point to open up the discussion for applications of augmented reality, gestural interaction and tangible interfaces in new methods of working, learning, and creating in the domain of 3D modeling and elsewhere. The vision of TADCAD is much more than this current implementation, and I welcome you to join in the discussion of how to use technology to enable creation, fuel creativity and inspire learning in new ways while remaining sustainable and accessible.

Links: http://paulate.github.io/tadcad

Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design
Bjørns Internationale Skole
http://codingpirates.dk
Copenhagen International School

Paula Te (US) is an interaction designer and engineer whose focus is on crafting interfaces to empower people in creativity and learning. Her most recent area of exploration has been in tangible interfaces for digital fabrication and maker education. Previously she worked in design education at Karkhana in Kathmandu and at MIT in Boston. She studied at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design and has a BSc in mechanical engineering from MIT.