Diver’s Log

Welcome!

ShapeDiver is a web service for publishing parametric 3D data. It is run by ShapeDiver GmbH, a limited liability company registered in Vienna, Austria. Alexander Schiftner, Mathias Höbinger and Mathieu Huard founded it in 2015.

Our motivation is to bring parametric modelling to the web, and to make it a smooth, convenient and exciting experience for both designers and viewers. We want to offer the flexibility of mass customization to every company, big or small, in a simple web browser. Read more about our mission.

Our responsibility is to do it in a way that respects every...

Few topics in human history have such deep, meaningful roots as tattoos. For this reason I decided to give it a fresh approach! Join me while we explore the possibility of complementing this thousand-year old practice with modern technology!

The oldest tattoo on record belongs to Ötzi*, a man who lived over 5000 years ago in the Italian Alps. His mummified body has at least 57 tattoos consisting of stripes, crosses and dots. Without a doubt, the art of tattoos has "marked" human history while evolving in amazing ways.

As mentioned in my previous blog post, Parametric Design...

>>Getting to know...<< is the place where ShapeDiver introduces game changers in the field of Parametric Design. During our blog series we'll let great brands and projects do the talking and present their work, so sit back and enjoy!

In this edition we'll get to know a 3D printing lab inside the Politecnico di Milano that is working hand in hand with patients suffering from different rheumatic diseases and how Parametric Design has helped them create tools that allow these patients to have a better quality of life.

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- Tell us a bit about yourself...

We are excited to introduce the "ShapeDiver - Shapeways Bridge": an integration of the world-famous 3D printing marketplace into our platform. In a few clicks, users will be able to configure 3D models on a ShapeDiver viewer, either directly on our website or while embedded in any other, and seamlessly order the finished product as 3D-printed objects via Shapeways. This is a bridge between your parametric designs and the whole world.

What is Shapeways?

Shapeways is the platform that defined the 3D Printing industry.  In here designers can upload their 3D models for other...

Welcome!

ShapeDiver is a web service for publishing parametric 3D data. It is run by ShapeDiver GmbH, a limited liability company registered in Vienna, Austria. Alexander Schiftner, Mathias Höbinger and Mathieu Huard founded it in 2015.

Our motivation is to bring parametric modelling to the web, and to make it a smooth, convenient and exciting experience for both designers and viewers. We want to offer the flexibility of mass customization to every company, big or small, in a simple web browser. Read more about our mission.

Our responsibility is to do it in a way that respects every...

The Reason

There are two types of people in this world: those who notice car rims, and those who don't. I used to be the latter, until I started noticing them... then I just couldn't stop.

It all started with my first car ever, a Seat Ibiza 2004. Finally, no more riding along in other people's cars. I finally had my own. While extremely grateful, I couldn't stop but noticing that every other Seat Ibiza looked practically the same as mine.

See, when you buy a normal car, it's produced with economies of scale in mind. This meant that my Ibiza shared parts with many other VWs...

Parametric Dreams is a new space we've opened specifically for early entrepreneurs and students to share their stories and projects involving Parametric Design.  Every world-renowned designer was once a student and we believe every student dream deserves to be heard!

Modifile is a Digital Files provider for CNC machines. They are an Italian startup, based in Venice and founded by Alessia Rosada and Carlos Travaini.

- What's your background and where did you learn about design in general?

Alessia: We both started learning about design by just observing. That being said, our past...

Designers Corner is the place where ShapeDiver designers talk about their work. There is a story behind every model, and who better to tell the story than the designer himself? 

In our third episode we interview Javier M Gaxiola founder of DimensionN, a Computational Design studio that specializes in the development of large scaled projects involving Parametric Design, Digital Manufacturing, 3D Printing, 3D Scanning, CNC Production among others.

His studio is based in Mexico, a country that in recent years has been steadily developing a great interest in everything related to...

We're happy to announce that starting TODAY you can finally upload definitions created with Rhino 6! This is easily the most requested feature we've received in the past months, so we're more than happy to finally deliver on this. Read below to find out a bit more about our system's new capabilities!

What's new in Rhino 6?

Lots! And it comes with a new version of Grasshopper which itself has many new features. It has python scripting, new components (including the popular Make2D) and some multi-threaded components for increased performance. We will follow up with a post about...

Parametric Dreams is a new space we've opened specifically for early entrepreneurs and students to share their stories and projects involving Parametric Design.  Every world-renowned designer was once a student and we believe every student dream deserves to be heard!

For our first episode we interviewed Annapaola Vacanti. She's a student from Italy who needed a platform to present her latest idea: Parametric Eyewear.

- Hi Annapaolla! Thank you for agreeing to this interview. How old are you and what's your background?

Hello! Thank you for having me here! I'm 25 years old and I...

Designers Corner is the place where Parametric Designers talk about their work. There is a story behind every model, and who better to tell the story than the designer himself?

Meet Arthur Mamou-Mani (Founder & Director at Mamou-Mani Architects)

For this episode we went to London  and sat down with Arthur Mamou-Mani, french architect in charge of this year's Main Temple (Galaxia) at the Burning Man Festival in Black Rock Desert, Nevada, USA.

Arthur is director of the award-winning practice Mamou-Mani Architects, specialized in a new kind of digitally design and fabricated...

The ability to provide a scalable sales platform for custom products is called mass customization, and it essentially comes with two necessary elements: on the one hand, a...

There's a belief that good design, especially in 3D, can only be achieved after months (or years) of constant practice. That anyone wanting to showcase their talent needs to go through a specific training and have (buy) the latest equipment and software. I believe that in 2017 this is not the case anymore, at least partially.

I created this Grasshopper definition embedded below to demonstrate that Parametric Design is the shortest bridge between design and users that have never experienced any type of design software. 

Without a doubt, this opens new possibilities for both...

FabTools is a Grasshopper plugin proposing a set of tools for fabrication purposes. FabTools is meant to improve your fabrication workflow, from design to production.

FabTools is packed with features that make it easier to prepare complex Rhino and Grasshopper models for production. Processing and organizing big amounts of geometry, unrolling and arranging production data, creating technical annotations... Those are a few of the possibilities that are already unlocked for ShapeDiver users, or will be in the near future.

The highlight: unrolling production data

Our primary...

Parametric Dreams is a new space we've opened specifically for early entrepreneurs and students to share their stories and projects involving Parametric Design.  Every world-renowned designer was once a student and we believe every student dream deserves to be heard!

1. Hi Gabriel! Thank you for joining us. Could you tell us your background and a bit about yourself?

Sure, thank you for having me here! My name is Gabriel Costa Ganzarolli and I'm 22 years old. I graduated from Industrial Design at the São Paulo State University (UNESP) and just created this Parametric Prosthesis...

Designers Corner is the place where ShapeDiver designers talk about their work. There is a story behind every model, and who better to tell the story than the designer himself?

Meet Pavlina Vardoulaki (Co-Founder/Creative Director: DesignMorphine)

For this fourth episode, we interviewed Pavlina Vardoulaki. She's Co-Founder and Creative Director at DesignMorphine (we did an introduction of them a few weeks back, so if you haven't checked that out we suggest you do that as well to complement this read).

She's currently employed at Laguarda.Low Architects in New York working on...

"There are no markets. Only customers. Stop marketing. Start customering."

Joseph Pine is no stranger to coining new terms. While he shies away from the ownership of "mass customization", it is through his seminal book that the term initially gained popularity. In the past twenty years, mass customization brought tremendous changes to the industry, but Joseph Pine is already looking further. The future will tell us if "customering" will make as big of a wave as its predecessor. But all in all, Pine is essentially describing the natural evolution of mass customization.

"Markets...

By far the most popular blog post in ShapeDiver's history was the one where we featured the first version of our tattoo configurator. For our 2nd attempt, we learnt from the weaknesses of the first model and made it more efficient, faster and intuitive.

ONCE UPON A TIME...

...we envisioned a world where simple (yet powerful) online product configuration was possible. We looked at the available options available on the market and thought that there should be a better way of doing this.

Fast-forward to 2018 and ShapeDiver has enabled many companies, small and big alike, with the...

Hi Grasshopper designers,

in this blog post we provide you with an overview of the material settings recognized by ShapeDiver in Grasshopper models. In case you can’t wait and want to give it a try right away, go ahead: download and experiment using one of our example models. 

There are two ways to assign materials to the outputs of your Grasshopper definitions. If you are an experienced user, you might already be familiar with the combined use of the Material component with the Custom Preview component. We will start by giving a little reminder for this method. We will then mention our...

Hi! 

Welcome to ShapeDiver! Is this the first time you visit us? Check out what we do, take the time to look around, why don't you even sign up and try to upload a model yourself? 

The reason I'm asking is that we are looking for a new member in our team, and if we could only require one thing from you, this is what it would be: to believe in what we do. If you do, it means you love working at ShapeDiver. It means you bring new ideas to the table and help us realize our full potential. It also means that if we take the wrong path, if we need to change the way we think and the choices we...

Hi Grasshopper designers,

in this blog post we provide you with an overview of the controls recognized by ShapeDiver in Grasshopper models. In case you can’t wait and want to give it a try right away, go ahead: download and experiment using one of our example models, or have a look at our demonstrator model, which makes use of all supported types of controls and outputs.

Sliders

The most common type of input parameter. ShapeDiver supports all sliders settings, like minimum and maximum value, real or natural number, number of digits, etc. The sliders’ name is used to present the...

<< Some weeks ago we traveled to Madrid, Spain to meet the team behind Autofabricantes and MediaLab Prado. These guys are working on some exciting projects involving all types of 3D printing and parametric design, but the one that really caught our attention was SuperGiz.>>

THE PROJECT

As you'll learn in the video below, SuperGiz is a different type of prosthetic device. It wasn't meant to mimic an exact human hand but rather to be extremely useful at very specific situations, like playing basketball or while eating. You'll also learn about one of the first kids already using...

<<All artists have a unique creative process that they follow every time they design something new. Wanting to know more about this, last month we met with our good friends from Modifile.com and asked them if they could share their creative process with us. Here is how they do it.>>

NOTE: We've covered Modifile.com in the past, so if you haven't checked our previous post we recommend for you to do so.

About Carlos and Modifile

Carlos Travaini is the lead designer at Modifile.com. He's an Argentinian that moved to Venice, Italy many years ago and is constantly busy alternating...

A Little Background

There are different schools of thought when it comes to defining parametric design. By schools of thought, I mean ferocious armies fighting to death on a desolate battlefield. At this point, the only safe move in attempting a definition would be to go for the most conceptual one. Fortunately, it might also be a good vantage point for developing a healthy discussion on the topic.

Greg Lynn provides a satisfying answer in that regard: The processional model of the subject as either the animating force or as the occupant of privileged points of view assumes that architecture...

<< Hi, my name is Edwin. I'm a Grasshopper expert at ShapeDiver and in this blog post I will show you how to improve the rendering of your Grasshopper definitions by properly mapping textures on your geometry and then applying some great looking materials. Let's get going!>>

One of the most common issues I've seen Grasshopper users encounter when uploading their definitions to ShapeDiver.com is "poor" rendering of their models. Great online rendering depends on several factors and two of the main ones are:

1. The online viewer used to display the 3D files (we've been doing...

>>Getting to know...<< is the place where ShapeDiver introduces game changers in the field of Parametric Design. During our blog series we'll let great brands do the talking and present their projects, so sit back and enjoy!

Who we are...

DesignMorphine is a creative hub for design through workshops, lectures, projects and explorations in the field of architecture, design and the arts.

Our goal is to provide the essential elements of trending design practices in a condensed way. Our team is composed of many talented designers and architects, lead in the moment by Tsvetelina...

Parametric Dreams is a new space we've opened specifically for early entrepreneurs and students to share their stories and projects involving Parametric Design.  Every world-renowned designer was once a student and we believe every student dream deserves to be heard!

There's nothing more important during the early stages of being a student than feeling that you have all the support you'll ever need. Regardless if this support is merely moral or monetary, there's no doubt that one can always do more to help those in need.

For this reason, and as part of the effort to push...

>>Getting to know...<< is the place where ShapeDiver introduces game changers in the field of Parametric Design. During our blog series we'll let great brands do the talking and present their projects, so sit back and enjoy!

Parametric Bench designed for IKEA Center Group

ControlMAD Advanced Design Center is a FabLAB (Fabrication Laboratory) for advanced architecture, engineering and design. Our working process is characterized by the use of CNC technology (Computer Numerical Control). This technology allows designers to manufacture components (interior and exterior) for...

>> We've opened up a space for Digital Fucina's founder, Fabrizio de Paolis, a professional 3D modeler and Grasshopper specialist. In the following months he'll be posting several ideas on what Mass Customization means to him and his project Digital Fucina.<<

Unique Objects for Unique People

How many times have you visited a friend's house and noticed an object that until that moment you thought you were the only one in the world who owned it? Did you experience a vague sense of annoyance? I do, every single time.

Sometimes this particular object is a different color than...

Peacock is a Grasshopper plugin that significantly lowers the bar for designers to create original jewelry designs. By supporting Peacock, ShapeDiver makes a big step towards the jewelry industry.

Peacock is both simple and exhaustive. It includes all the standard gems and cabochons, pre-designed and ready to be integrated in original models. In the same spirit, Peacock gets you started with several ring templates. Customize them in a few clicks with standard parameters, by using an original profile curve or unleash your craziest ideas and define the shape with completely...

>>Getting to know...<< is the place where ShapeDiver introduces game changers in the field of Parametric Design. During our blog series we'll let great brands and projects do the talking and present their work, so sit back and enjoy!

In this edition we'll get to know part of the team of Autofabricantes who develop several projects inside Medialab Prado's FabLab in Madrid! This is the first of a three-part series involving everything related to the great projects they've been developing for children with motion disabilities.

- What is Medialab-Prado?

Medialab-Prado's FabLab is a...

A 3D product configurator is a great upgrade for an eCommerce platform, but to make sure it generates more customer conversions, there are some marketing questions that need to be addressed early. Here are a few tips to make sure your configurator is used in the optimal way.

The Two First "Moments of Truth":

In traditional marketing, the First Moment of Truth refers to the first few seconds after a shopper encounters a product, on a store shelf or in a WebShop. It is the moment when a company has the best chance to convert shoppers into buyers by appealing to their senses and...

Designers Corner is the place where ShapeDiver designers talk about their work. There is a story behind every model, and who better to tell the story than the designer herself? Introducing the series is Elissa Ross, a mathematician fascinated by the tight relationship between science and art.

The Designer

I'm a geometer working as a consultant in the digital design industry. MESH Consultants is a small team of mathematicians, who work on all kinds of projects that involve both challenging geometry and computation. We love to work on architecture projects, but we also do a lot...

>> We've opened up a space for Digital Fucina's founder, Fabrizio de Paolis, a professional 3D modeler and Grasshopper specialist. In the following months he'll be posting several ideas on what Mass Customization means to him and his project Digital Fucina.<<

According to the ancient Greek mythology, the Titan Prometheus in a moment of generosity (and not caring about the consequences) decided to steal fire from Zeus himself in order to give it to humanity. This selfless act thus enabled progress and civilization.

Since this moment, humanity has exploited these resources in...

Hi Grasshopper designers,

in this blog post we provide you with an overview of the Grasshopper outputs supported by ShapeDiver. In case you can’t wait and want to give it a try right away, go ahead: download and experiment using one of our example models, or have a look at our demonstrator model, which makes use of all supported types of controls and outputs.

Which outputs get displayed by our viewer

ShapeDiver will display everything that’s visible in your Grasshopper definition’s preview. That means you should deactivate the preview option on all components except the ones you...

Grasshopper designers, 

we are happy to announce a long-awaited new feature to you – support for textures. The ShapeDiver plug-in for Grasshopper has been extended with components enabling you to specify texture images to be displayed in ShapeDiver's viewer. In the following we explain how to make use of this feature. 

Principle

Texture images are specified by means of publicly accessible URLs. You are not required to embed the images into your Grasshopper model – simply make your texture image available for download at a publicly accessible URL. ShapeDiver's material component in Grasshopper...

We're happy to announce the long-awaited support for Python scripting on ShapeDiver. While ShapeDiver has been C# and VB.NET-friendly for a while, Python lovers can now come out of a long period of frustration!

Python is a flexible programming and scripting language that is supported by many applications, and therefore allows your work to be reused in different environments. 

Unlike other scripting components, the Grasshopper Python component allows to use the rhinoscriptsyntax to start scripting without needing to be a programmer. Once on-board and with some practice, you can...

Parametric Dreams is a new space we've opened specifically for early entrepreneurs and students to share their stories and projects involving Parametric Design.  Every world-renowned designer was once a student and we believe every student dream deserves to be heard!

Jacob Blitzer is an American computational designer that, as many reading this blog, fell in love with Parametric Design years ago. He decided to do something about it so he started his Coronate Project, an experiment involving a parametric rings and his will to sell them whatever it took!

1. How did you discover...

>> We've opened up a space for Digital Fucina's founder, Fabrizio de Paolis, a professional 3D modeler and Grasshopper specialist. In the following months he'll be posting several ideas on what Mass Customization means to him and his project Digital Fucina.<<

What do some American sport champions, DC's superhero The Green Lantern and Tolkien's Lord Sauron have all in common? I am not referring to great athletic prowess, ability to save the world or dreaming about dominating Middle Earth. They all wear an object that can often give us a lot of information about the wearer. I'm...

Designers Corner is the place where ShapeDiver designers talk about their work. There is a story behind every model, and who better to tell the story than the designer himself? Our second episode introduces Dani Abalde, a jewelry designer working with bio-inspired algorithms.

The Designer

Daniel Abalde is an artisan jeweler in training at the Escuela Atlantico in Vigo, Spain. But Daniel really considers himself an algorithmic designer. He is one of the few creators who both develop computational tools and later use these tools to create a design and eventually a product.

When...

The logic of your models can only be defined within Grasshopper before you upload them to ShapeDiver, and through material settings within your Grasshopper definition you can also influence the way they look here on ShapeDiver.

For even more options such as the background color, initial view angle or the order of parameters in the control menu, you will be brought to the ShapeDiver Model Edit Page after you have uploaded a new model. If you want to adjust your settings later, you can access it from two places:

• by clicking “Edit” on the regular model view page for one of your own models

>> We've opened up a space for Digital Fucina's founder, Fabrizio de Paolis, a professional 3D modeler and Grasshopper specialist. In the following months he'll be posting several ideas on what Mass Customization means to him and his project Digital Fucina.<<

Hello everyone and welcome back!

For this article I decided to tackle a slightly different topic than on previous opportunities, let's say a more concrete one. I want to talk about ONEOFF, an Italian company located in Milan.

They are a Digital Manufacturing service that uses modern CAD CAM systems in order to build models...

>> We've opened up a space for Digital Fucina's founder, Fabrizio de Paolis, a professional 3D modeler and Grasshopper specialist. In the following months he'll be posting several ideas on what Mass Customization means to him and his project Digital Fucina.<<

Exactly 20 years ago, when we were still far from imagining the smartphone, the Finnish company Nokia launched a product characterized by a particular feature that from then on would become a cultural phenomenon worldwide.

The product in question was the Nokia 5110 phone and the feature in question was the...

<< Hi, I'm Mathieu, co-founder and Head of Product at ShapeDiver. In this blog post, I'll present the latest update to our Grasshopper plugin, focused on the creation, import, export and manipulation of images inside Grasshopper.>>

I marvel everyday at the versatility of Grasshopper. Being a developer by training, it's always striking to see how the Grasshopper canvas lowers the bar for designers to develop complex algorithms, even beyond the CAD kernel of Rhinoceros. Today I'm happy to present a set of tools we have developed for working with images in Grasshopper, and to...

<< Hi, my name is Edwin. I'm a Grasshopper expert at ShapeDiver and in this blog post I will show the difference between standard meshes and b-reps and how this can impact the performance and rendering of your Grasshopper definitions on ShapeDiver. Let's get going!>>

Grasshopper represents geometry in two ways: using b-reps or using meshes. This is something the majority of Grasshopper developers already know, but a deeper understanding of these concepts can help clarify how they can affect the performance