[ericvolp12]

This was really well explained and interesting.

Funnily enough I'm pretty sure this is a really similar method to urinal design, so if this whole basketball thing doesn't work out for ya, you could always work for American Standard...

[rurban]

Similar methods exists for all kinds of engineering problems, like architecture (form follows function), roofs, bridges, city planning, or just the economy.

The optimal form is always an optimization problem. Just define the constraints. Maybe the most famous example is Gaudi calculating the form of the roofs of the Sagrada Familia, and then Frei Otto for the Munich Olympics. City planning is easier as their is no gravity, just more constraints. Think of SimCity run in a simulation with feedback loops.

The best planning approach is always prolog-like. Define the facts and rules, and the forms will fall out eventually by itself. Then optimize the solutions iteratively according to cost functions. It's called OR, operations research. I did a lot of that with free-forms, also even simply office layouts, when I worked as architect. We even sold CAD programs to special manifacturers to design a good roof or other free-form shapes. Like for Disney.

[dhosek]

Speaking of Disney and architecture and parabolic shapes, apparently when the Disney concert hall was first built, the curved shapes of the building acted as parabolic reflectors which focused on nearby apartment buildings. They had to sand the panels to reduce the reflectivity because they were heating the apartments to as much as 140°F.

[rurban]

Good example. You need roughen it also for better sound quality on the inside. For Disney I had develop lot of linear algebra optimizations for smoothing which went over my head mostly, so I used symbolic solvers.

We don't have much sound optimization CAD programs, so we worked with light as replacement for sound, and looked at the reflections with raytracers. For the big, expensive concert halls and opera houses.

[remarkEon]

Upvoted this because I'm tired of peeing on urinals in bars and restaurants that have flat walls, and every time I do I think "gosh don't these guys have any engineers on their payroll?".

[TeMPOraL]

It's the same thinking as with software UI/UX. Doing things right is so last century, you have to stand out somehow.

[stillsut]

The design idea is also similar to the the original stealth fighter design, the "hopeless diamond"[0], in that it's optimized to bounce all possible radar waves away from returning to their receiver.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Have_Blue