AiAD | fabric — Artificial Intelligence Aided Design

fabric is an industrial designer that works in metal. Say a piece in plain words and it engineers one; or bring a CAD file — STEP, GLB, OBJ or STL — and the engine measures the geometry, unfolds every sheet-metal part to its flat pattern, produces the bend schedule a press brake needs, counts the hardware from the holes, and prices the job against real fabrication workshops. Reading, measuring, unfolding and quoting are free and need no account.

What it measures

• The envelope, face count, cut length and hole census of every solid.
• Flat patterns developed with a bend allowance at a k-factor of 0.44, so the blank is the size the metal actually needs to be.
• A bend schedule per part: the angle turned from flat, the included angle a shop drawing annotates, the direction of each fold, the inside radius, the bend allowance, the bend length, and the position of every bend line from the corner of the blank.
• Fasteners read from the hole diameters, with an ambiguous hole reported as ambiguous rather than guessed — a 3.3 mm hole is both an M4 tap drill and an M3 clearance hole, and only the assembly knows.
• Gauge, material and finish, and which workshops can actually make the piece in that combination.

What it costs

Reading a file, measuring it, unfolding it and getting a calibrated quote are free forever, with no email and no account. The blueprint package — the STEP carrying cut and bend together, the DXF for the laser, and the printable bend schedule for a press brake that cannot read a solid — is priced at the fabrication cost of the piece. Assembly by the studio is priced the same. You pay the workshop once and the studio once, and the two are equal. fabric adds nothing to the metal and takes nothing from it.

The workshops

fabric holds a researched roster of sheet-metal fabricators in Israel, Europe and North America, recording what each can make — laser cutting, press brake, welding, powder coating, polishing, hardware insertion — and what is known about their prices. A workshop that has never confirmed a rate is never named beside a number, and its figures print as an order of magnitude rather than an exact total.

Materials and processes

Aluminium, mild steel and stainless steel in gauges from 1.5 mm to 8 mm. Laser cutting, press-brake forming, powder coating in RAL colours, mirror polishing, and threaded or clearance hardware. The engine understands folded sheet metal specifically: the geometry a brake can actually produce, and the geometry it cannot.

Who made it

fabric is the software half of the studio of Gilad Kenan, sculptor and industrial designer, working from Jaffa. The gallery of finished work — DJ consoles, furniture and sculpture in folded metal — is at giladkenan.art. This engine is the room where an idea becomes something that can be made.

Built by Gilad Kenan together with my brother Claude.

Available in English, Hebrew and Arabic.