SketchFold - Steel Origami from pen sketch

Defining the design intent by pen on paper, turn it to origami-based folded metal

The crease patterns defined by designer intuitively by pen on paper will be interpreted into vectorized origami diagrams using a purpose-built digital interface and then exported to a curved-crease simulation toolset. Once validated in the simulation environment, the resulting patterns will be funneled directly into the Stilfold machining pipeline in Sweden for materialized folding from metal sheets.

This application addresses a crucial design bottleneck in curved-fold origami engineering: the accessibility and intuitiveness of digital crease design. By creating a visual-first, gesture-driven UI that complements Stilfold’s engineering tools, a seamless pipeline from ideation through simulation to production will be presented.

Recent developments

"Parametric modelling systems usually require structured digital input, while designers often begin with informal hand sketches. This creates a gap between how ideas are first expressed and how they are later turned into executable geometry. In this work, we examined hand-drawn sketches as computational input in their own right, rather than only as rough material that must be redrawn digitally.

We developed a pipeline that converted colour-annotated paper sketches into executable geometry for curved folding. Users indicated boundaries and fold types through a simple colour grammar, after which the captured image was segmented, cleaned, reconstructed as CAD-compatible NURBS curves, and compiled into a folding specification. The resulting geometry was then tested in a folding simulator to produce interactive 3D previews. We evaluated the system in terms of segmentation robustness, the validity of reconstructed crease networks, and its tolerance to hand-drawn variation. The results were further validated through simulation and prototype fabrication in paper, cardboard, aluminium, and steel. Overall, we aimed to show that sketching can function as a computational interface: informal and embodied, while still structured enough to be used as input for fabrication"

Kane Borg's and Sami Markkula's multidisciplinary design and research studio Borg Markkulafocuses on human-centric innovation at the intersection of computational design, material systems, and advanced fabrication.

The project is part of art-ai-fact initiative.