Filamap: Visualizing Material Properties for FDM 3D Printing Using Parallel Coordinates
Consumer-grade Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D printing has become increasingly commonplace, but novice users often lack the expertise to harness the power of their hardware. Among other issues, users tend to over-rely on standard materials (e.g., PLA), despite modern consumer printers being capable of processing a multitude of filaments suited to diverse applications. Our interactive visualization tool FilaMap supports novices in material selection. FilaMap is built around a parallel coordinates plot (PCP) that allows users to filter and explore materials without requiring prior expert knowledge. The tool was developed in an iterative process including 12 user tests, yielding a well-tuned and validated interaction design. In addition to being a useful tool, FilaMap demonstrates that PCP—traditionally associated with expert users—can be effectively adapted for a selection task and made accessible to novices. We report on the application and its design process as well as discussing wider implications for PCP.