Beetle Blocks Visual Code for 3D Design

About

Beetle Blocks is a graphical blocks-based programming environment for 3D design and fabrication.

Use code to control a beetle that can place 3D shapes and extrude its path as a tube. Then make a 3D print!

Credits

By Eric Rosenbaum, Duks Koschitz, and Bernat Romagosa, with additional software development by Jens Mönig.

Beetle Blocks is based on Scratch and implemented using Snap! and ThreeJS.

This project has been partially sponsored by the Pratt Institute, Citilab - Cornellà and Arduino.org.

Work in progress

Please note: Beetle Blocks is alpha software, currently in development. Only the Chrome browser is currently supported. We'd love to hear your feature requests and bug reports on github.

Run Beetleblocks  

Examples

In the Wild

Design and Computation at the Pratt Institute

In Duks Koschitz's course, students use Beetleblocks for in-depth exploration of 2D and 3D algorithmic design. They fabricate their designs using wire-bending machines, pen-plotters, and 3D printers. Check out the student blogs to track their progress.

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Exploratorium Tinkering Studio

The facilitators at the San Francisco Exploratorium Tinkering Studio experiment with Beetleblocks themselves, in workshops with teachers, and with museum visitors. They use the watercolorbot to make colorful paintings of Beetleblocks designs.

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