Developing a Digital Interactive Fabrication Process in Co-existing Environment

In the stage of prototype practice, the maker mainly works by himself, but it needs to test and adapt to find correct fabrication method when maker didn’t have clearly fabrication description. Therefore, rapid prototyping is very important in the prototype practice of the maker. “Design- Fabrication-Assembly” (DFA)- an integration prototyping process which helps designers in creating kinetic skin by following a holistic process. However, DFA lacks a medium for communication between design, fabrication and assembly status. This paper proposes a solution called co-existing Fabrication System (CoFabs) by combining multiple sensory components and visualization feedbacks. We combine mixed reality (MR) and the concept of digital twin (DT)–a device that uses a virtual interface to control a physical mechanism for fabrication and assembly. By integrating virtual and physical, CoFab allows designers using different methods of observation to prototype more rigorously and interactively correct design decisions in real-time.