A design system for the mass customization of Thonet chairs

The development of an automated design system to design and produce mass customized Thonet chairs is described in the present paper. The system is based on a conversion of a shape grammar into an equivalent parametric design model implemented in CATIA, to assist the designer in conceiving and producing customized chairs within the given design style. Rapid prototyping of existing and new designs was used to fine tune the parametric model. Finite Element Method (FEM) was integrated in the process to test the distribution of stresses of the structures, providing knowledge for refining of the parametric design system.