My Digitally Fabricated World

 By Don Olsen

Welcome back everyone. This week I decided to share the model that I've spent a number of hours on over the last few weeks. When spring break hit I decided that I really needed to try and bring together all the ideas that I had been working on over the course of the semester. I've spent a fair amount of time developing various connections that would be need to design a full concept home. So I brought together all those connects to test out weather a two story house section could be built utilizing all those connections. So at first I set out to create a single one vertical series of pieces that would make up the whole two stories. Most of these parts were things that I had already developed and I just needed to put in place to make work. When it came to the roof however I spent time developing new pieces and new connections to make up the 12:6 pitch and how the peek would play out. Once I have a fully developed building rib I went in to looking at how many I should align next to each other to create enough of the building to really investigate. I ended up creating a 16'X16' model, shown in figure 1, which would make up about half the structure. I figured that this was enough to not only show how the system worked, but look at and investigate the weakness of the system, and look to improve or further develop the connections I had. There are some obvious issues with this test. First the system is one that relies on the sum of its parts to gain it's full strength. As this model is just a portion of the full building it is missing a large part of what will ultimately make it strong. Secondly, due to the time it has taken to get this far on the assembly there are still a number of parts yet to be added to complete the model. Again not fully showcasing the full capabilities of the system and the model. Ultimately I think this test has proven to be very rewarding and informative about the system itself. It proves that the system can work and to what capacity even with an unfinished model. Hopefully this model will both be finished and expanded upon in the next few weeks. In figures two and three you can further see the current state of the model and the amount of work yet to be completed. Till next time keep fabricating.  

photo credit: Don Olsen