Print&Fold: Printing and Folding Shape-accurate 3D Models

This paper introduces Print&Fold, a tool to allow FDM 3D printing of complex models with less time and material while preserving shape accuracy. Key to this work is a folding algorithm that planarizes foldable faces internal to the 3D model. While folding techniques typically discretize a target model's surface, thereby fabricating low fidelity counterparts, our method preserves the surface features in the physical print. Our design tool allows users to unfold 3D models to be FDM-printed flat before manually folding these into their target shapes. We showcase a variety of applications and evaluate the material and time savings across a range of 3D models.