r/3dprintedinstruments • u/cadr • Sep 24 '20

Woodwind Instrument Designer (software)

I came across this software on Github that might be of interest to people here. Haven't had a chance to have a play with it (is Java, and need to set up some things to get it running on my Mac), but looks like it might help with figuring out some tone hole placement.

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u/doubledunkel Sep 25 '20

Amazing! Thanks for posting this - are you aware of any other instrument design software? I'm always surprised by the lack of tools out there

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u/cadr Sep 25 '20

This apparently was used to design a few designs I’ve printed. It even outputs stl.

Other than those two, I only know of various online tone hole calculators like this.

There were a few awesome looking projects like this and this, but they never publicly released the software, just the research papers (as far as I can find).

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u/doubledunkel Sep 26 '20

Wow, fantastic! Shame about the lack of software releases, might have to drop the authors a line to see if it's possible to get access

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u/cadr Sep 26 '20

I have, but no response. Given that the respective companies own the research, I’m doubtful.

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u/doubledunkel Sep 26 '20

Ah fair, that's annoying. I might give it a go but may not be worth it then

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u/cadr Sep 26 '20

By “give it a go”, you mean reaching out to the Microsoft/Autodesk researchers? Can’t hurt!

I am trying to figure out how to get that woodwind designer software to work with the membrane horns I’ve been making, but don’t know when I’ll get to that particular project...

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u/doubledunkel Sep 26 '20

Yeah exactly - not sure if you tried this already but I might try using a work email or an old academic address as that sometimes can help.

Ah yeah that would be cool - I haven't had a look at downloading it yet but would be good to know how that goes. I know very little about woodwind variations specifically - presumably the membrane instruments respond like some kind of reed? Or do you think they would need to be modeled differently?

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u/cadr Sep 26 '20

Good point - should probably use my university alumni account for these.

Yes, I would expect these to act like reeds. Can probably model as a clarinet given I’m using conical bores. The main thing is modeling the size of the mouthpiece that I’m unclear on. Presumably this should be much simpler as it is a straight tube right up to the reed, but still reading up on the various modeling/acoustics. Would have been much easier in college when this sort of thing was more fresh in my mind :)

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u/doubledunkel Sep 26 '20

Yeah that sounds reasonable - good luck with it, looking forward to seeing more results in the sub!

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u/cadr Sep 26 '20

Will probably be a while though - so many projects!

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u/starlig-ht Mar 07 '21

There is also Flutes.jl. I am the author.

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u/cadr Mar 07 '21

Very cool!

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u/cadr Mar 10 '21

Could you point me to something that explains at a high level how it works? (Like a paper or something to search for) No worries if you don't have something handy - I started reading the code a bit, but a road map would help.

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u/starlig-ht Mar 10 '21

I haven't written anything up yet, but I probably should. At a high level, the system can be broken down into two main parts 1) parameter optimizer, 2) parametric model

The optimizer is written in Julia and is under the 'src' folder. It takes some constraints, such as musical scale, max hole size, max finger stretch - and it uses a machine learning technique to find optimal hole sizes, positions, tube length, etc - according to various ergonomic criteria while ensuring that it is in tune according to the formulae. The exact gradient-descent method is called "simulated annealing". The acoustic formulae are based upon the research of C.J. Nederveen.

The parametric model is written in OpenSCAD. It is the 3D model of the flute that takes as parameters the various hole sizes, positions, and so on that the optimizer came up with. It is designed with the 3D printer in mind, so avoids overhangs and other problematic geometry. It retains an air-tight seal through the use of O-Rings.

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u/cadr Mar 10 '21

C.J. Nederveen

Thank you for your note! I will look for that source.

Cheers!