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DESIGN 43
www.fdmasia.com | FDM ASIA SEP/OCT 2026
is set per material, and the part's cost is that base price containing six-view photographs for each part, the minimum
multiplied by the computed volume. board size required to cut each part, and the estimated
Each aligned object is photographed from six directions; material cost per part.
because other objects would otherwise obstruct the shot, Using the exported blueprint, the parts were ordered
every object except the current target is temporarily hidden through the wood custom-cut service. The ordering process
before each capture, and the on-screen dimension label is relied exclusively on the dimensions provided in the blueprint;
rotated to face the camera so that dimensions remain legible no additional measurements or design adjustments were
from any direction. made at this stage.
The captured images, required material dimensions, and Once the cut wood parts arrived, they were assembled
cost are then laid out across two PDF pages per object. into a physical chair using nails and adhesive—the closest
physical equivalents to the FixedJoint connections used in VR.
From Virtual Design to Real Chair The chair designed in VR was successfully reproduced
To evaluate the reproduction-support functions, one of the in the physical world. The physical assembly corresponded
authors built a chair using the proposed system, exported its visually and structurally to the virtual design, demonstrating
blueprint, ordered the required parts through a wood custom- that the blueprint provided sufficient information to procure
cut service using the exported dimensions, and assembled the necessary materials and assemble the intended object.
the delivered parts. The blueprint's estimated total material cost was ¥15,254,
The resulting physical chair was then compared against compared with the actual order cost of ¥16,490—a difference
the in-VR design. This trial was deliberately designed as a of ¥1,236, representing approximately 7.5 percent of the
proof-of-concept study rather than a controlled experiment actual cost.
with multiple participants or conditions. This difference is attributable to two factors. First, the
The research question at this stage is one of feasibility— cost calculation is based on an approximation of wood
whether the proposed reproduction-support functions can volume that does not fully account for the specific cutting
bridge the virtual and the physical at all—rather than one of and machining fees charged by the service; the calculated
relative performance or user preference. cost used a simplified volume-based formula that did not
Accordingly, usability testing with general users and include processing fees such as edge finishing or additional
comparative evaluation against existing design and DIY cutting complexity.
tools lie outside the scope of this study and are identified Second, the actual ordering service charges for machining
as future work.
The author used the system's object generation, cutting,
and joining functions to construct a chair entirely within the www.magnific.com
VR environment. The design incorporated multiple parts of
varying sizes and shapes, assembled into a functional seating
structure. After completing the VR design, the part-alignment
function was activated.
The system automatically disassembled the chair into
its constituent parts, arranged them in descending order of
volume with dimensions labelled, and exported a PDF blueprint

