My first large-scale parametric design contract came from a family-owned furniture company in the Midwest. They offered a variety of design options for their expansive collection, and wanted to develop an interactive application that allows customers to input custom dimensions and style options, then view the design in a 3D interface. The goal was to develop Grasshopper scripts for each piece, and showcase them on their website, using the ShapeDiver platform.

The client provided design guidelines for each piece of furniture, which contained dimension information, notes on what values are static or variable, and other options. With that information, I developed over 130 different models for their various collections of tables, desks, hutches, cabinets, and dressers. Each parametric model was uploaded to ShapeDiver's platform, then, with the help of our web developer, Krissie, were displayed on the company's website, in a beautifully-designed 3D application. Users were able to view each piece of furniture as an interactive 3D model, and see the model update in real-time when they changed any of the options, including: size, wood species, stain or color, door and drawer style, hardware style, and more.

In addition to the customer-experience-focused interactive models, the scripts I developed for each piece also contained a robust set of functions that generated fabrication information, such as drawings, cut lists, and assembly diagrams. These utilities operated within the application, so once a customer finalized all design choices for their selected furniture piece and placed the order, a PDF containing all the part drawings and cut lists is generated behind the scenes, then sent to the shop. Additionally, a CSV file was produced and automatically emailed to the main office. This file contained data points on everything from individual part dimensions and quantities, to stain selection; that file was then imported into a spreadsheet to compose the purchase order.