Matthias and I have been thinking about ways we
could replace the combscript workflow for laser CAD with
something physical, on the table, at full scale. Matthias had
mentioned that the thing we need to exploit is the idea of
having multiple physical tools used in combination, multiple
sheets of paper, etc., using these analog advantages in place of
the affordances we're used to on the screen.
I'm building on this idea, Alexander's idea of start whole
and add detail, and the ways I've been sketching on the
whiteboard before I hit combscript. The advantage of the
laser, besides being able to cut materials that are hard to
cut with scissors, is the extreme precision you can get. And
the advantage of sketching on paper/whiteboard is how quickly
and fluidly you can think through a rough idea. So let's
combine these two, using a Sketchpad workflow of draw first,
constrain after.
Attached is a video mockup of how this might look. I do the
first steps of the shelves I designed yesterday, laying out
the grid system with measurements.
(Excuse the sloppy lighting :P )
Think of it as "magic paper".
You draw on it with special pens, each a different color,
each with different semantics. For example red means
horizontal/vertical straight line, blue means length
measurement, black means freehand curve, etc.
This enables you to draw freely while also specifying
constraints. The paper adjusts itself under you.
This could be realized further using projection. Or a
workflow with a camera watching your drawing and a printer
spitting out precision-adjusted iterations whenever you hit a
button, just like Sketchpad's "solve constraints" button.