You may not realize that splines were once physical things. In an era prior to CAD and large-format printing, when draftsmen needed to lay out full-sized curves—for boatbuilding, airplane manufacturing and the like—this is how they did it. To be clear, the “spline” is the actual strip of wood being bent and held in place. The things holding it in place are called spline weights, or colloquially, “ducks” or “whales.” They weigh about five pounds apiece. […]

While volumetric displays have a long history dating back from the 1910s and are still an active topic of research, the improvement and democratization of LED technology made it possible for anyone to build low-resolution volumetric displays by arranging many LEDs in a 3D matrix. Today, hundreds of video tutorials and demos of LED cubes can be found on YouTube (the left image is from a 2021 tutorial). Perhaps one of the earliest people to come up with the idea was artist Todd Holoubek, who […]

This report demonstrates the viability of a new handleable protein molecular model with a soft and transparent silicone body similar to the molecule’s surface. A full-color printed main chain structure embedded in the silicone body enables users to simultaneously feel the molecular surface, view through the main chain structure, and manually simulate molecular docking. The interactive, hands-on experience deepens the user’s intuitive understanding of the complicated 3D protein structure and […]

Geospatial datasets are too complex to easily visualize and understand on a computer screen. Combining digital fabrication with a discrete global grid system (DGGS) can produce physical models of the Earth for visualizing multiresolution geospatial datasets. This proposed approach includes a mechanism for attaching a set of 3D printed segments to produce a scalable model of the Earth. Two models have been produced that support the attachment of different datasets both in 2D and 3D format. […]

Landscape models of geospatial regions provide an intuitive mechanism for exploring complex geospatial information. However, the methods currently used to create these scale models require a large amount of resources, which restricts the availability of these models to a limited number of popular public places, such as museums and airports. Landscaper is a system for creating these physical models using an affordable 3D printer in order to make the creation of these models more widely […]

Physical visualizations (i.e., data representations by means of physical objects) have been used for many centuries in medical and anatomical education. Recently, 3D printing techniques started also to emerge. Still, other medical physicalizations that rely on affordable and easy-to-find materials are limited, while smart strategies that take advantage of the optical properties of our physical world have not been thoroughly investigated. In our paper, which received the Best Short Paper Award […]

During the last decades, anatomy has become an interesting topic in education—even for laymen or schoolchildren. As medical imaging techniques become increasingly sophisticated, virtual anatomical education applications have emerged. Still, anatomical models are often preferred, as they facilitate 3D localization of anatomical structures. Recently, data physicalizations have proven to be effective and engaging—sometimes, even more than their virtual counterparts. So far, medical data […]

. A team of researchers at the MIT Media Lab developed physical user interfaces based on fluidic channels that can interactively respond to mechanical inputs from the user, without any electrical power. Above, line charts that are activated and animated by pressure input. Source: Hila Mor, Yu Tianyu, Ken Nakagaki, Benjamin Harvey Miller, Yichen Jia, and Hiroshi Ishii (2020) Venous Materials: Towards interactive, fluidic mechanism. Related: Also see our other artifacts involving mechanical […]

STRAIDE is a string-actuated interactive display environment that allows to explore the promising potential of shape-changing interfaces for casual visualizations. It is a open-source hardware platform that spatially levitates elements to create dynamic visual shapes in space. The physical research environment is highly modular and can thus be adjusted along manifold parameters, like the number of elements, arrangement, illumination, or input capabilities. Multiple representative physical […]

To support interactivity, a computational design pipeline enables designers to 3D print various network datasets. The result are sensing network physicalizations that have innate sensing capabilities. The 3D printed networks can recognize touch selection because of the conductive traces routed throughout the network links. Source: Bae, S. Sandra, Takanori Fujiwara, Anders Ynnerman, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Michael L. Rivera, and Danielle Albers Szafir (2023). A Computational Design Pipeline to […]