Knitting Skeleton

This is the open source implementation of the paper

Knitting Skeletons: Computer-Aided Design Tool for Shaping and Patterning of Knitted Garments.

The project page is there: http://knitskel.csail.mit.edu/

Since the system is in a continuous work-in-progress state, there are likely going to be bugs or desirable features missing. For bugs, file an issue here. For other inquiries, contact Alexandre Kaspar.

Dependencies

The system is a web client written mostly in Javascript with some HTML/CSS layouts. The Javascript development is made with Node.js and Browserify.

To install all dependencies, use npm:

npm install

Development

If you want to compile the system, you can use npm scripts:

• npm run build will output the full compiled code in js/skeleton.js
• npm run watch will use watchify to continuously update the code as code changes (while providing debugging information)

To check some basic test on provided skeletons, use

• npm run test

Third party libraries

This project is making use of many third-party libraries for its development. The notable ones are in the dependencies of package.json. We are especially thankful to the following:

• CodeMirror for the in-browser code editing capabilities
• Simplenoise for the perlin/simplex noise implementations
• Force-Graph for the easy force graph layout

Credits

We want to thank our collaborators from Jim McCann's Textiles Lab at CMU. They are the ones who initially deciphered the DAT format.

Working with knitting machine XXX?

Currently, we've had the chance to work with a Shima Seiki SWG091N2 machine. However, the system could likely work with more generally v-bed machines (provided there is a known way to output data for them).

A more general strategy would be to output Knitout code and use an available backend for your machine. This is not done yet but should be reasonably easy to implement since our system outputs code for whole beds / courses at once, which is quite more regular than general Knitout code.

References

If you make use of this software, we would be grateful if you can cite us:

@article{Kaspar19b,
  title = {Knitting Skeletons: Computer-Aided Design Tool for Shaping and Patterning of Knitted Garments},
  author = {Kaspar, Alexandre and Makatura, Liane and Matusik, Wojciech},
  journal = {Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST)},
  year = {2019},
  address = {New Orleans, Louisiana, USA},
  month = {20--23 Oct},
  isbn = {978-1-4503-6816-2/19/10}
}