In the event of an accident or cancer of the mandible or, “jaw,” portions of it can be replaced with other bones from your body. Surgical guides are being introduced to ensure accuracy and better aesthetic outcomes when reassembling the bones. I used Grasshopper, a parametric plug in for Rhino 3d, to generate the guides simply by locating points. My objectives were to design a more efficient workflow to generate patient specific surgical guides using parametric software. Since the guides are produced with the almost limitless potential of 3D printing I also aimed to improve the form for efficient fabrication and structural optimization. The grasshopper script allows the quick generation of a guide form without drawing curves or all the work traditionally involved with CAD modeling. Simply dragging a slider will alter the radius, change the amount of façade surfaces and can all be regenerated to match new point locations which are useful working with new patient data.
