Field-Aligned Mesh Joinery

Mesh joinery is an innovative method to produce illustrative shape approxi- mations suitable for fabrication. Mesh joinery is capable of producing com- plex fabricable structures in an efficient and visually pleasing manner. We represent an input geometry as a set of planar pieces arranged to compose a rigid structure, by exploiting an efficient slit mechanism. Since slices are planar, to fabricate them a standard 2D cutting system is enough. We automatically arrange slices according to a smooth cross field defined over the surface. Cross fields allow representing global features that char- acterize the appearance of the shape. Slice placement conforms to specific manufacturing constraints.