Formalising flexible multi-material surfaces as weighted shapes

The introduction of multi-material additive manufacturing makes it possible to fabricate objects with varying material properties, leading to new types of designs that exhibit interesting and complicated behaviours. But, computational design methods typically focus on the structure and geometry of designed objects, and do not incorporate material properties or behaviour. This paper explores how material properties can be included in computational design, by formally modelling them as weights in shape computations. Shape computations, such as shape grammars, formalise the description and manipulations of pictorial representation in creative design processes. The paper explores different ways that material properties can be formally modelled as weights, and presents examples in which multi-material surfaces are modelled as weighted planes, giving rise to flexible behaviours.