The Cathouse

My last gift for my cat 东野 who passed away on September, 2021

Project Summary

Class: Digital Fabrication
Instructor: Andy Garcia
Timeline: 3 Weeks
Softwares: Rhino 7, Grasshopper, Slicer for Fusion 360, Adobe Illustrator
Materials: cardboard, plastic(for 3d printer)

Project Details

I had a lovely cat 东野 who had accompanied me for over 10 years. However, she passed away on September, 2021.

As a strong advocate for creating innovations for the ones that I love, for the final project, I decided to make a cathouse for my best friend.
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Research from different aspects

1. Sustainability

Cardboard is one of the materials with the least environmental impact. Its manufacture means a reduction of up to 60% in CO2 and oil emissions compared to other materials.
Also, the cardboard is 100% recyclable and biodegradable. Corrugated cardboard degrades completely within a maximum period of one year.
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2. Functionality

There are tons of different kinds of cathouse in the market. However, most of the products only look pretty. Since my cathouse is designed for cats' daily uses, I consider it should be more functional rather than beautiful.
The ideal
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3. Eat, Scratch & Sleep

Based on my observations for over 10 years, cats either like enjoying the sunlights or hiding from people. Therefore, I want the cathouse to not only have a “cave” to hide from the outside world, but also a “rooftop” for them to enjoy the sunlight. Therefore, I summarized the daily routine of cats into 3 key words: EAT, SCRATCH, AND SLEEP. Here are some of the sketches; I picked the fist draft as my final version.
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Modeling Process

Cathouse Body part

I used Rhino 7 to model the whole cathouse.
I use loft function to create the wavy shape, and use the boolean difference to get the cave. The length is 61 cm; the height is 26 cm, which is a perfect size for a cat.

Cat-grass container

I purchased a cup of cat grass online, and the size of it is 95*95*70 mm. I made the container slightly bigger, with the radius 50mm and the height 70mm.
To make some organic cutout, I use Grasshopper to build the model.

Time to get my hands dirty!

Fusion 360: cutting the body part

I exported the body part to the Slicer for Fusion 360.
It divided the whole body into 300(100*3) pieces.
The size of the cardboard that I used is 420*600mm.

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Adobe Illustrator: preparing files

I rearranged those 300 pieces in Illustrator in order to make fully use of the cardboards. I tired to make the spaces between each piece as small as I can.
The pictures show the process of laser cutting and getting the pieces.

Laser-cut & 3D print: the final product

It was a tedious job printing out all the pieces, which took more than 8 hours in total.
Moreover, sometimes the cardboards could be on fire when the temperature was too high😨🔥