On Tuesday November 5th at 21:00 in Amphitheatre, prof. Athanassios (Thanos) Economou will give a lecture entitled: "Shape Machine: A new modeling paradigm in CAD".
Text-to-image, image-to-image, and more recently, text-to-vector Machine Learning (ML) models have been increasingly pervading contemporary architectural practice and pedagogy. And yet, Find and Replace operations, fundamental for any ML model —and essential in Word, Excel, or Photoshop for that matter— have yet to be implemented in Computer-Aided Design (CAD). How would ever be possible to have a generous implementation of symbolic (classical) or neural (non-classical) computational models in design when the most fundamental operations of all —vector-based Find and Replace shape operations— have not been properly implemented in CAD? The talk discusses the current state of Shape Machine, a shape-rewrite computational system that features vector-based shape find and rewrite operations and a logical processing framework to literally allow drawing programming code for searching and editing CAD models by drawing shapes. The software is developed at the Shape Computation Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and is currently integrated within Rhinoceros, a NURBS 2D/3D CAD software. Several applications drawn from architectural design, digital fabrication, modeling infectious diseases, knot theory, and other fields showcase the potential impact of this new technology in various domains.
Athanassios (Thanos) Economou is a Professor at the School of Architecture in the College of Design and an Adjunct Professor at the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Economou's teaching and research are in shape grammars, computational design, computer-aided design, and design theory, with over sixty published papers in these areas. He is the Director of the Shape Computation Lab, a research group that explores how the visual (and unruly) nature of shape can be formally implemented with new technologies to enable new paradigms in CAD, design automation, visual scripting, and creative design. Recent projects include the Shape Machine, a new computational technology that allows shape embedding in CAD systems Dr. Economou holds a Diploma in Architecture from NTUA, Athens, Greece, an M.Arch from USC, and a PhD in Architecture from UCLA.
https://shapemachine.design.gatech.edu
A production of an origami tessellation in Shape Machine. Yu Y., Hong, K., Economou, A., Paulino, G. Rethinking Origami: A Generative Specification of Origami Patterns with Shape Grammars, Computer-Aided Design, 137