Here's something I bet you've never heard of before today Computational Origami:
Robert Lang, a laser physicist and origami artist for more than 30 years, continues to be amazed at the potential applications of the centuries-old art of paper folding. "You would think that there is not much you can do with origami as an art form that has not been already figured out," he says.
But, Lang adds, origami artists continue to "demonstrate new structures and realize new levels of beauty," a statement well supported by his own origami renderings of subjects such as cows, fish, blue herons and owls.
Origami was purely a hobby for Lang until he decided to apply the kind of mathematical modeling he used in laser physics to paper folding.
... Today, while concentrating on his art, Lang also works as an industrial consultant, applying his computational origami expertise to the design of a range of products, including consumer electronics and medical equipment.
... EASi Engineering GmbH in Alzenau, Germany, asked Lang to help determine how to squeeze a very large object -- an automobile air bag -- into a tiny compartment inside a steering wheel. Lang had already developed algorithms to flatten a set of polygons, and he applied them to a computer simulation of how to flatten the 3-D polyhedron shape of an inflated air bag. This process saved time and eliminated the expensive requirement of crashing real cars to determine if an air-bag design would really work, Lang says.
According to Lang you can download software. Only trouble is that it runs on Mac and it "can be mastered by a high school student" which rules me out on both counts.
