Origami Simulator

Something fun you can do with this is export the SVG files (File -> Save Pattern as SVG...) and edit them as necessary in order to use a die cutter like a cricut to easily make some cool stuff! Of course, doing it the old fashioned way is better in many ways.

I use a cutter tip and a foil transfer tip (a blunt metal pen-shaped tip) in combination. The cutter cuts, and the transfer tip helps establish crease marks.

It's not ideal because you can't easily establish creases for folds in both directions, but if you want you can use a template to align your paper on a mat so you can do a second pass with the paper flipped over to get creases going the opposite direction. I've found it's not really necessary unless the paper is thicker.

This is one of many cool projects from Amanda Ghassaei [0]. It's from 2017 when she was at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms.

She went on to do some work based on this at Adobe [1], and is now doing independent consulting.

[0] https://amandaghassaei.com

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-llAe4fsJ-A

I'm a big fan of the RES (Rotational Erection System) work that Yoshinobu Miyamoto has been making lately with Origami Simulator. He builds the crease forms parametrically in Cuttle (CAD tool I'm building), and then can copy/paste into Origami Simulator to see the folded form:

https://www.instagram.com/yoshinobu_miyamoto/

Shameless plug:

Origami in 194 bytes https://www.dwitter.net/d/19020

(wait for the physics to kick in)

Related:

Origami Simulator - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24883022 - Oct 2020 (23 comments)

What a great way to learn how to make these! Love this