Biomimicry
Borrowing the structural strategies of biological materials — and where they show up in the suite.
Architecture, not chemistry.
Biological materials reach remarkable stiffness, toughness, and lightness with ordinary constituents by controlling architecture across scales. Biomimicry in lattice design means reproducing those architectural strategies — not the chemistry — in a printable structure.
A few recurring motifs: the bicontinuous, foam-like networks of trabecular bone; the rotating-plywood Bouligand layups of impact-resistant shells; the smooth, fully-connected minimal surfaces that pack high surface area into low density; and graded density that places material only where stress demands it.
Motif to tool.
grain and noise produce the bone- and foam-like stochastic structures; bundle builds the Bouligand and woven fiber motifs; tpms and wave generate the minimal-surface architectures; and gradient and bias controls across the suite reproduce graded, directional placement of material.
Start from the function.
Start from the function the biological structure performs — energy absorption, directional stiffness, surface area — rather than its appearance, and pick the tool whose mechanism matches that function.