Intelligent Prefabrication
Washington University in St. Louis, Spring 2023

This seminar introduced students to computational prefabrication thinking and techniques. Students used STUD-IO’s StudFinder software to design and build full scale parametric systems.

Process

Digital Fabrication is often critiqued as not being scalable to larger projects since it is often associated with highly specialized small prototyping and installations. This seminar focused on digital fabrication at the medium to large scale using a proprietary system designed by STUD-IO Computational Construction (founded in 2019 by WUSTL alumni Scott Mitchell). The system focuses on intelligent prefabrication using custom parametric software to create a series of robotically fabricated steel studs that can be easily assembled into almost any form. The CNC machine used for this system is specifically designed to make these custom steel studs with a series of pre-punched operations, promoting mass-customization.

During this seminar, students worked in pairs to develop parametric systems with a wide range of geometric versatility, while also ensuring that their systems meet the constraints involved in the assembly of steel studs. These constraints include ideas such as how studs that connect web to web (back to back) must have webs that lie on the same plane. Similarly, the center axis of studs that connect by slotting into one another must also lie on the same plane. While these constraints may initially seem limiting, deeper investigation into strategies of aggregating parts reveals a vast space of geometric potential. Students explored this potential by focusing on the analytical geometry driving their systems (points, lines/axes, planes).

Students then used STUD-IO’s StudFinder software to automatically convert their analytical models into fabrication information. At its core, StudFinder is a constraint satisfaction solver, and it understands the constraints involved in steel stud systems (see above). Students worked with the solver to ensure constraints were being met and to automatically interpret their systems as fabricatable structures.

At the end of the seminar, models were exported to machine files, and the steel studs were fabricated using a Howick steel stud roll-forming machine. The machine punched out every single screw hole needed to fasten the studs together, with the extremely precise holes allowing for quick assembly of the parts into the exact shape of the digital model (no tape measure or protractor required). The fabricated studs were shipped to St. Louis and assembled in place here.