3Dtilan

3Dtilan is a conceptual software framework designed to create, manipulate, and exchange three-dimensional tiling patterns and modular assemblies. It provides a parametric workflow for generating tessellations across 3D surfaces and volumes, enabling designers to define tile shapes, adjacency rules, and symmetry constraints. The framework supports iterative exploration of complex, repeatable patterns that can scale from small prototypes to large installations.

Its core components typically include a tiling engine that enforces placement constraints, a material and shader layer for rendering appearances, an export pipeline to common 3D formats such as GLTF, OBJ, and STL, and a plugin API for integration with major 3D applications. A scripting interface enables procedural generation of tile sets and parametric variation of pattern density, scale, and symmetry.

Applications span architecture, game development, product visualization, and studies in materials science where modular tilings simulate microstructures. 3Dtilan emphasizes repeatability, scalability, and rapid iteration, reducing manual modeling time by encoding adjacency rules and tile geometry as data rather than manually authored meshes. The framework is described in community documentation and tutorials as a versatile approach to modular design and procedural 3D generation.

History and development: The concept emerged in maker and academic communities in the mid-2010s, evolving through open discussions, reference implementations, and tooling plugins. The name 3Dtilan is used in varying contexts to refer to both the theory of 3D tiling and the associated software ecosystem.

See also: tiling, tessellation, modular design, procedural generation, 3D modeling.