https://github.com/samsilverman/rwmicro
rwmicro is a lightweight C++ library for generating random-walk microstructures—binary patterns created by a periodic random walk.
https://github.com/samsilverman/rwmicro
computational-mechanics cpp generative-design materials-science metamaterials microstructure monte-carlo procedural-generation random-walk stochastic
Last synced: about 1 month ago
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rwmicro is a lightweight C++ library for generating random-walk microstructures—binary patterns created by a periodic random walk.
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/samsilverman/rwmicro
- Owner: samsilverman
- License: mit
- Created: 2026-01-11T16:31:13.000Z (3 months ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2026-02-03T20:48:27.000Z (2 months ago)
- Last Synced: 2026-02-04T09:36:30.518Z (2 months ago)
- Topics: computational-mechanics, cpp, generative-design, materials-science, metamaterials, microstructure, monte-carlo, procedural-generation, random-walk, stochastic
- Language: C++
- Homepage:
- Size: 72.3 KB
- Stars: 3
- Watchers: 0
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- Contributing: CONTRIBUTING.md
- License: LICENSE
- Citation: CITATION.bib
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README
# rwmicro
[](https://github.com/samsilverman/rwmicro/issues)
[](https://github.com/samsilverman/rwmicro/issues)
[](https://doi.org/10.1145/3745778.3766645)
[](https://github.com/samsilverman/rwmicro/actions/workflows/macos-build.yml)
[](https://github.com/samsilverman/rwmicro/actions/workflows/ubuntu-build.yml)
[](https://github.com/samsilverman/rwmicro/actions/workflows/windows-build.yml)
`rwmicro` is a lightweight C++ library for generating *random-walk microstructures*—binary patterns created by a periodic random walk.
Random walk microstructures produce expressive, diverse, and always-connected material layouts that are ideal for metamaterial design and learning structure–property relationships. This library is used in our paper:
>Samuel Silverman, Dylan Balter, Keith A. Brown, Emily Whiting
[*Random-Walk Microstructures for Differentiable Topology Optimization*](https://sam-silverman.com/assets/pdf/Silverman-RandomWalkMicrostructures.pdf)
Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication (2025)
## Dependencies
- **C++17 or later**
- **Catch2 v3** (optional, for testing)
- **OpenMP** (optional, for example applications)
## Building
```bash
git clone https://github.com/samsilverman/rwmicro.git
cd rwmicro
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make -j8
```
The recommended way to use `rwmicro` is to vendor it directly (e.g., as a git submodule) and add it to your build with:
```cmake
add_subdirectory("path/to/rwmicro")
target_link_libraries(your_target PRIVATE rwmicro)
```
### Library Compile Flags
| CMake Flag | Default | Description |
| - | - | - |
| `RWMICRO_BUILD_TESTS` | `OFF` | Build test suite. |
| `RWMICRO_BUILD_APPS` | `OFF` | Build command-line applications. |
| `RWMICRO_USE_OPENMP` | `OFF` | Enable OpenMP parallelism in command-line applications. |
These flags are set in the cmake line:
```bash
cmake .. -DRWMICRO_BUILD_APPS=ON ...
```
For convenience, a `build.sh` script is included for building with compile flags:
```bash
./build.sh
```
## Minimal Example
```cpp
#include
#include
#include
int main() {
const std::size_t nx = 5;
const std::size_t ny = 5;
const std::size_t targetMass = 15;
rwmicro::Grid grid(nx, ny);
rwmicro::grow(grid, targetMass);
const bool valid = rwmicro::validate(grid);
std::cout << "Microstructure:\n" << grid << std::endl;
std::cout << "Valid: " << valid << std::endl;
rwmicro::save(grid, "microstructure.csv");
return 0;
}
```
## Documentation
Documentation for all functions is provided through Doxygen-style docstrings. [Command-line tools](https://github.com/samsilverman/rwmicro/blob/main/apps/README.md) in `apps/` demonstrate complete example workflows.
## Applications
Build and run the provided command-line tools:
```bash
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DRWMICRO_BUILD_APPS=ON ..
make -j8
./apps/
```
See the apps [README](https://github.com/samsilverman/rwmicro/blob/main/apps/README.md) for more details.
## Tests
Build and run the test suite:
```bash
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DRWMICRO_BUILD_TESTS=ON ..
make -j8
./tests/rwmicro_tests
```
## Contributing
Contribution guidelines are provided in [CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/samsilverman/rwmicro/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md).
## Maintainers
- [Sam Silverman](https://github.com/samsilverman/) - [sssilver@bu.edu](mailto:sssilver@bu.edu)
## Citation
```bibtex
@inproceedings{Silverman:2025:RandomWalkMicrostructures,
author = {Silverman, Samuel and Balter, Dylan and Brown, Keith A. and Whiting, Emily},
title = {Random-Walk Microstructures for Differentiable Topology Optimization},
year = {2025},
isbn = {9798400720345},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3745778.3766645},
doi = {10.1145/3745778.3766645},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication},
articleno = {25},
numpages = {11},
keywords = {microstructures, random walks, inverse design, neural networks, homogenization},
location = {},
series = {SCF '25}
}
```
## License
Released under the [MIT License](https://github.com/samsilverman/rwmicro/blob/main/LICENSE).