Tangible – convert data into tangible 3D models

In the past, making data tangible was a complicated, manual process. Digital 3D
representations of complex data have been around for quite a while, but they
were always conﬁned to the digital world. Mostly because it was impractical to
convert a digital model to a physical representation.

With the advent of cheap, affordable 3D printers, this changed. It is now easy
to convert a purely digital model to a tangible, physical object. The missing
piece in the process of making data tangible is the conversion of data to a
digital 3D model.

With my student research project thesis at HSR, I tried to
solve that problem by providing an easy to use software library with “batteries
included” that can convert arbitrary numeric data to 3D models. The library –
named Tangible – is written in Python and provides a set of predeﬁned but
customizable shapes, a few tools to preprocess data and a backend implementation
for OpenSCAD, an open source programmatic CAD software.

Tangible is implemented as a cross-compiler with a simple abstract syntax tree
(AST), a set of predeﬁned shapes that build on top of the AST and an interface
that allows the creation of different code generation backends.

The library is ready to use, well tested and thoroughly documented. It has been
released under an open source license and is available online at
https://github.com/dbrgn/tangible.