No mention of existing tools that automatically optimize things like weight or stiffness given a design space:

http://solidthinking.com/inspire2015.html

This would seem an ideal step to fill the gap between 2 connectors in the Disney paper. They must have some kind of solution but I didn't see what it was.

So how do I start using it?! They document the method. I didn't see anywhere that they provided a github link. ;) Maybe they want us to implement it?

I was recently thinking about printing a top using a technique they talked about a couple of years ago. I was dissapointed that I was not able to find any software. I have seen this happen several times from Disney. It's cool that they did this, but it's not very usable without some code.

The publishing criteria for a siggraph paper is that the description has to be detailed enough that it could be implemented by a grad student experienced in the area. It doesn't have to be directly usable.

I've heard that working code counts for more that it used to, but the main goal of academic research is the exchange of ideas and techniques, not making working production software.

I've seen this many times in technical papers, and on a few occasions I've implemented work based the description of an algorithm in a paper. Though the viability of that really depends on the nature of the system under discussion.

This have the potential to be the killer application that 3D printers are missing.