As part of my day job at a US government space agency, I developed a tool to quickly generate structural finite element models of aerospace vehicles including rockets, aircraft, and landers. While not its primary purpose, the program can also be used to create models for 3-D printing. It is called Loft and was recently approved for public release. It can be downloaded for free at https://software.nasa.gov/software/LAR-18704-1. If you want to take a look at the manual before downloading the software you can see that for free at https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20230001772. I also gave a presentation at the AIAA SciTech conference in January 2024, where I talked about the code and three broad use cases for it.
The conference paper can be read here. And the AIAA featured my paper on Kudos here.
Here are some 3-D prints that I created using Loft:
The Loft input files to create these calculus models are linked below:
- Parabola with triangular cross-section – These are the white models in the picture and both the continuous and discrete models are created.
- Half Sine curve with rectangular cross-section – The orange models in the picture, which I printed twice.