Yarn-Level Modeling of Non-Uniform Knitted Fabric for Digital Analysis of Textile Characteristics - From a bitmap to the yarn-level model

Modern CNC weft knitting machines are capable to produce textiles with complex non-uniform structures and shapes in a single operation with minimum human intervention. The type of knit structure and the settings of the knitting machine significantly influence the fabric characteristics and its role in architectural comfort. However, there is still no open-access tool for fast and efficient analysis of textiles with consideration of their knit structure, especially if they are knitted non-uniformly. Moreover, the existing methodologies of digital modeling of the knit structure are not linked to the actual production of textiles on flat-bed knitting machines. This paper presents a tool that "reads" a bitmap image that can be as well imported into a knitting machine software and generates a yarn-level geometry of the knitted textiles, that can be further integrated into the behavior analysis software within the rhino-grasshopper environment. This methodology helps to preview and analyze knitted textiles before production and can help to optimize the programming of bespoke knitted textiles for large-scale architectural applications.