Abstract
This paper presents the detail of our interactive tool for designing reciprocal frame (RF) structures. In general, our tool addresses the RF design problem with three major steps: (1) it supports the design of RF-tessellation by connecting RF patterns and plane tiling; (2) it delivers interactive preview and exploration of RF designs in 3D space through conformal mapping; and (3) it performs a novel optimization method to arrange the rods in the RF-structures, so that we can ensure rod collinear contacts in the structures. This paper supplements our previous work with implementation details, user interface design and operations, as well as a preliminary study and various new results we devised from the tool.