alt.hn

4/22/2025 at 3:50:48 PM

Hyperwood – Open-Source Furniture

 https://hyperwood.org/

by panic

4/22/2025 at 6:48:40 PM

As somebody with a wooden house and the feeling to learn carpentry and spend less time programming I think this is brilliant. Combining minimal design with a hacker and DIY ethos is brilliant. Kudos, bookmarked; hope I can find the time to tinker with the designs.

by tmpfs

4/23/2025 at 8:38:34 AM

I recommend making time to build at least one piece of furniture. I did not use hyperwood principles, but I built my own computer desk and workbench to my specifications and I cannot imagine ever buying a premade work surface again. It is rewarding, helps you think about a project from both a production and use-case perspective, and unlike my programming/tech troubleshooting efforts, the results are very tangible and something I can touch and see every day, lending to a lasting sense of accomplishment.

by 0xEF

4/23/2025 at 9:05:27 AM

I do not see how to use this system. It just says what it is. The github also specifies a format but says nothing about usage, and neither do the Rust docs.

How do I feed in a mesh or something and it outputs an algorithmically generated slat furniture? This simple example would make things usable.

by survirtual

4/23/2025 at 3:10:40 PM

It took me awhile, but their home page has a good code example and a link to some github projects. I grabbed one of their code examples and fed it into the web viewer, then followed along as I read about the format on the home page.

From there I think you could experiment with different widths, heights and depths and eventually come away able to build a slat-based piece of furniture with a text editor.

I don't think I could write something from the ground up in this language without a lot of work, but on the other hand I've seen people using CAD programs and the goofiness that happens when, for instance, they have a few hidden points they didn't know about. This format avoids all that pretty nicely.

by troyvit

4/23/2025 at 10:07:59 AM

Nice idea, but why didn’t they go with an existing file format instead of making their own?

VRML would have been a good choice: human readable, many CAD programs can import and export it, and there’s a web viewer available.

by perilunar

4/23/2025 at 3:05:10 PM

Seems like VRML would've worked, huh. It looks like they do have an export to .stl, and in fact it looks like their web viewer actually uses .stl with three.js to represent the model. So there's that.

Almost the rest of the comment is just random observations that have little to do with your observation.

I think they did it this way because they are going for a bit of a Markdown approach. HEF looks somewhat more human readable than VRML once you learn the syntax and they have a basic tutorial on their home page.

I fed one of their example pieces into their online viewer and it loaded instantly. I was hoping for a parts list from it but I don't see one. Aha, that's because it's embedded in the .hec itself.

Not knowing VRML I'm thinking I could build something with .hec, and I can't build my way out of a paper bag.

by troyvit

4/24/2025 at 7:07:53 PM

This is great. Furniture from one type of wood piece. Went recently through a similar process to optimize building bird nests from one type of wood planks from the local sawmill. I think I'll give the hyperwood bench a try next week.

by astrolx

4/23/2025 at 7:47:29 PM

As someone who just finished building a dresser for a bedroom, I wish I wood have found this sooner! Love the idea.

by owls-on-wires

4/22/2025 at 11:42:29 PM

Where does one get the wood itself?

by yahoozoo

4/23/2025 at 7:38:31 AM

A sawmill?

by boudin

4/23/2025 at 1:19:46 AM

Very nice

by davidkwast