3D Printing, Customization, and Product Lines

Customiza*on  and  3D  Prin*ng    

A  Challenging  Playground  for    So3ware  Product  Lines  

Mathieu  Acher,  Benoit  Baudry,    Olivier  Barais,  Jean-­‐Marc  Jézéquel  

3D  Print  your  3D  Printer  

Puppets  

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So7ware  product  line  (SPL)  perspec*ve  

3D  PrinIng  is  gaining  momentum  – CustomizaIon  also  

•  SPL?  Variability?  •  «  the  ability  of  a  so3ware  system  or  arIfact  to  be  efficiently  extended,  changed,  customized  or  configured  for  use  in  a  parIcular  context  »  

•  Can  SPL  engineering  learn  from  3D  prin*ng?  •  Can  3D  prin*ng  benefit  from  SPL  engineering?  

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Field/ethnographic  study    

We  observed  how  a  community  of  people  (i.e,  the  Thingiverse  community)  interacts  and  collaborates  for  achieving  a  technical  work  (i.e.,  customizing  and  producing  3D  models)  

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Playground  

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No  need  to  hide,    there  is  an  “open”  access  to  data  

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Analysis  of  Thingiverse  

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.scad

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Documenta*on    (hLp://customizer.makerbot.com/docs)  

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22  Variability Modeling Variability Implementation

Configuration Reuse

We  observed  how  a  community  of  people  (i.e,  the  Thingiverse  community)  interacts  and  collaborates  for  achieving  a  technical  work  (i.e.,  customizing  and  producing  3D  models)    

Preconcep*on:  product  line  perspec*ve  

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Conditional statements hell

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33 imbrications “else” not necessarily here

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Configuration

Clone and Own

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Reuse

Key  Results  (1)  

•  Variability  Modeling  and  ConfiguraIon  – Variability  concepts  are  here    – No  constraints  – ConfiguraIon  

•  Configurator  •  Visibility  /  SeparaIon  of  Concerns  •  Many  configuraIon  issues  

– Huge  complexity    •  38  parameters,  8  tabs,  10^28  configuraIons  

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Key  Results  (2)  

•  ImplementaIon  – Parameterized  Procedures  – CondiIonal  Statements  

•  33  imbricaIons  – pre-­‐compiled  datastructures    

•  themselves  parameterizable  

•  DerivaIon  – You  can  visualize  your  result  before  prinIng  

•  Limited  reuse  mechanism  

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So  What?  

•  Will  So3ware  Product  Line  Engineering  save  the  world?  

•  Can  help,  can  learn  

•  Challenges  ahead  

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Capture  Specific  Things  

•  Physical  properIes  – Are  we  even  able  to  print  the  3D  product  

•  Specific  to  the  product  – knowledge  out  there  

•  So3ware  level  

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Complexity  and  Cogni*ve  Effort  

•  Keeping  a  low  cogniIve  effort  – Not  necessarily  so3ware  developers  

•   More  sophisIcated  techniques  induce  someImes  accidental  complexity  

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Cost-­‐benefit  Tradeoff  

•  Cost  of  applying  more  sophisIcated  techniques  versus  benefit  of  upfront  investment  

•  Pay  off  when?  – For  dozens  of  people  in  their  garage?  – For  millions  of  rich  people?  

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Challenging  Playground  

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Future  

•  Automated  techniques  to  support  large  scale,  more  comprehensive  analysis    – Beyond  an  exploratory  and  very  manual  analysis  

– We  have  an  infrastructure  to  mine  Things  and  analyze  .scad  files  

•  Adressing  the  challenges  •  Helping  a  community  like  Thingiverse  to  master  the  complexity  

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OpenJSCAD  

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