Groundbreaking work with Thermal Processing, Surface Engineering & Coating tool could help design the buildings of the future.

The technical power beneath GENR8 is twofold: evolutionary search and HEMLS (Hemberg Extended Map L-Systems). A HEMLS, the generative process, is interpreted by GENR8 to generate a surface. GENR8 uses evolutionary search to discover its own HEMLS that adaptively evolve towards surfaces with features the user has specified.

The tool operates using a different logic to a human designer, with the aim of working as a creative partner with them. 'A car is a useful metaphor to describe the tool,' says Hemberg. 'Genr8 is an engine that constantly spits out new designs, while the designer sits at the steering wheel and must guide the tool so that it produces the kind of surfaces they are interested in.'

GENR8 evolves and grows its surfaces inside a CAD tool called Maya by Alias|wavefront (www.aliaswavefront.com/). Its graphical surface can be converted to a real (yes, touch and feel) surface in at least two ways. One way is to export the surface in a format compatible with importing it into the CAD tool FormZ. In FormZ, the surface can then be modified to 'lay flat' via a number of cut lines. Then, the flattened surface can be sent to a laser cutter which renders it onto a firm paper surface with all the cut lines etched. By deepening and cutting the cut lines, the 3 dimensional contouring is recovered. Another way, is to send the surface to a rapid prototype system which will produce it in SLA or SLS.

To just take a look at the documentation, click here.

There are two ways to use genr8. Firstly if the designer has a shape in mind, it can be used to find a digital representation of the surface, with the tool acting as a sketching aid. It can also be used as a creative engine to come up with ideas for particular problems, and it has a large number of parameters that can be tuned to direct the search for surfaces. Genr8 is expected to become a surface design tool for tomorrow's architects.

For further information, contact Martin Hemburg, e-mail: martin.hemberg@imperial.ac.uk, or visit www.ai.mit.edu/projects/emergentDesign/genr8/genr8Source.zip to download the genr8 the original source code for Maya 3.0 program. The code is copyright Martin Hemberg. There is also an updated version for Maya 4.0. - Visit www.ai.mit.edu/projects/emergentDesign/genr8/genr8Source4.zip

Una May http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/unamay

Peter Nordin http://fy.chalmers.se/~nordin

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