Autoknit is a computational system that can transform 3D meshes, created by traditional modeling programs, directly into instructions for a computer-controlled knitting machine. To invoke the autoknit interface and begin the program, the user specifies the path to an input 3D mesh and passes various parameters for customizing the features of the knitted product via command-line. Then, the interface is launched, creating a visualization of the mesh that the user can interact with. Since the program approaches knitting the mesh as a function of time, the user places constraints on the mesh to define its starting and end points. Once all of the necessary information is provided, the '3D knitting' system incrementally building a helix-free, quad-dominant mesh with uniform edge lengths, tracing the resulting mesh to generate a knitting path, and then scheduling the knitting instruction for this path in a way that is compatible with machine contraints. The workflow involves generating a 'stitch' (.st) file with information about the traced stitches in the mesh, which is then analyzed to produce a javascript (.js) file, and finally, a knitout (.k) file is outputted that can be converted into machine-specific code via a backend.
See the usage section of the README.md on the autoknit github page for detailed step-by-step instructions.
Autoknit is re-implementation of "Automatic Machine Knitting of 3D Meshes". It does not match the code used in the paper exactly, but is close in most regards. The latest version of this code is available at https://github.com/textiles-lab/autoknit.