Food4Rhino

Ovenbird is a Grasshopper plugin for creating shell printing (also known as surface printing) toolpaths and GCodes. The method of shell printing is typically used by architectural scale concrete 3D printing to reduce waste. The goal of Ovenbird is to streamline the toolpathing process between design and production. Its functions can be summarized in three aspects:

1. Single-material printing. It enables auto-oriented, non-parallel slicing for material extrusion 3D printing with post-slicing optimization features with the generation of GCodes and visualization functions.
2. Continuous printing. It enables slicing for continuous printing with a minimal number of on-and-offs accompanied by topological analysis.
3. Multi-material printing. It enables slicing and optimization for multi-material printing through a singular-nozzle multi-cartridge system with the generation of GCodes and visualization functions.

The plugin is named after red ovenbirds (Furnarius rufus), who build shell nests by gradually depositing mud, similar to the process of concrete 3D printing. We share ovenbirds' vision of printing our own houses. Ovenbird is developed by the Polyhedral Structures Laboratory at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. Please refer to the Ovenbird Handbook for detailed information. We suggest going through the example files to get familiar with the Ovenbird workflow.

Research projects powered by Ovenbird includes Diamanti: 3D-Printed, Post-Tensioned Concrete Canopy, 3D-Printed Carbon Absorbing High-Performance Building Structure, and Continuous Multi-Filament 3D Printing for Tension-Compression Structure Components.

Prerequisites

Some Ovenbird components rely on the following external plugins: NGon by petrasvestartas, MeshEdit by uto, Pufferfish by ekimroyrp, and Wombat by woodsbago. The developer also recommends using the following plugins: Pancake by illusionwing for cluster management and auto backup; pOd_GH_Button by Levin for wire management and preview window; Sunglasses by daniel gonzález abalde for data preview and component name display; and Human by andheum for geometry management.

Installation

To install, unzip the package. In Grasshopper, go to File → Special Folders → User Object Folder. Save the unzipped folder there and delete the previous one if you have it. Restart Rhino and Grasshopper. Please note that all components of Ovenbird are user components. Components in one's Grasshopper file (.gh) are not automatically updated when one installs a newer version of Overnbird by replacing the user component files (.ghuser) in the designated folder.

Software Developers

Yefan Zhi, Hua Chai, Teng Teng, Dr. Masoud Akbarzadeh

Principal Investigator

Dr. Masoud Akbarzadeh (masouda@upenn.edu)

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) Grant of U.S. Department of Energy (DE-AR0001631), the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (NSF CAREER-1944691 CMMI), and the National Science Foundation Future Eco Manufacturing Research Grant (NSF FMRG-CMMI 2037097) awarded to Dr. Masoud Akbarzadeh.