What is Generative Design?

For engineers who work in industrial businesses, generative design is the next frontier in CAD design. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create new high-performance design iterations that aid in the resolution of complicated issues, the reduction of component weights and manufacturing costs, the scaling of customisation, and the optimization of performance.

 

While extremely latticed designs with exceptionally complicated elements may appear strange, generative design now has a growing number of practical uses.

 

Learn how generative design works, its benefits, applications, and the critical role of 3D printing plays in bringing its remarkable design to life in this complete tutorial. See how you can get started right now with practical recommendations.

 

 

What is Generative Design?

 

Generative design is an iterative solution exploration approach that uses an AI-driven software programme to create a variety of design options that fit a set of criteria. Unlike traditional design, which starts with a model based on the knowledge of an engineer, generative design starts with design parameters and employs AI to produce the model. 

 

Engineers may identify highly optimized and personalized design solutions to a wide range of technical difficulties by adjusting design requirements in an increasingly sophisticated feedback loop, such as making the required components lighter, stronger, and more expensive.

 

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The Engineer's Changing Role in Generative Design

 

The engineer's position has developed in tandem with technological advancement. Knowing how to handle digital tools to address design difficulties has become a critical qualification for engineers working in many sectors as the design has developed to rely more largely on computer software. Before generative design, designers would draw and build iterations to conceptualize and test them.

 

Engineers now use generative design tools to establish high-level performance criteria and generic design frameworks before delegating the details to the programme. When describing new materials or modelling difficult-to-define issues and solution spaces, the process of determining these characteristics can be very challenging.

 

Engineers will no longer be required to produce innovative solutions themselves, a significant departure from typical design methods. Instead, they explain and modify the context in which design solutions might flourish through generative design. 

 

By allowing computers to conduct the "thinking," generative design allows engineers to concentrate on innovation and real concerns.

 

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Difference Between Topology Optimization & Generative Design

 

Topology optimization and generative design are becoming buzzwords in the design software space, but it's a popular misunderstanding that they're comparable.

 

Topology optimization isn't a new concept. It has been there for at least 20 years and is commonly used in CAD software applications. To begin, a human engineer must design a CAD model, adding loads and limitations while keeping project factors in mind. 

 

The programme then provides a single optimal mesh-model idea that can be evaluated by an engineer. In other words, topology optimization necessitates the use of a human-designed paradigm from the start, restricting the process, its consequences, and its scalability.

 

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Topology optimization, in a sense, provides the basic framework for generative design. The approach is taken a step further with generative design, which eliminates the requirement for the original human-designed model by taking over the job of the designer based on a preset set of restrictions.

 

 

Generative Design Applications

 

Many sectors use generative design applications, ranging from aerospace and architecture to production and consumer goods. Engineers that utilize generative design are frequently attempting to address complicated technical problems. 

 

Reducing component weights and manufacturing costs, scaling component customisation, and enhancing performance are examples of such problems.

 

1. Automobile

 

In the automobile manufacturing business, for example, engineers use generative plans to minimize constituent weights, strengthen weak design regions, reduce production costs through assembly consolidation, and shorten the time to marketplace for innovative products.

 

 

2. Sports Industry

 

Similarly, developers in the sports equipment business use generative innovation to attain a new high level of product effectiveness while reducing production costs. 

 

 

3. Aerospace Industry

 

In the aircraft business, the generative design allows airline designers to reduce the weight and enhance the robustness of plane components, allowing airlines to cut fuel consumption and, as a result, lower prices and emissions.

 

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Benefits of Generative Design

 

 

Simultaneous Exploration

 

One significant advantage of generative design is the ability to simultaneously explore, validate, and compare hundreds or even thousands of design choices. 

 

The programme can show and evaluate design possibilities in such a way that engineers may quickly and effectively locate the ones that best match the specifications and demands of a project.

 

 

Accelerated Design Timeline

 

Engineers may substantially decrease research and development schedules for innovative products when they use AI to uncover and test new complicated design iterations rapidly, efficiently, and at scale. 

 

As a result, organizations that use generative design might obtain a competitive advantage in terms of reducing product speed to market.

 

 

Utilize modern manufacturing processes

 

The generative design may generate complicated designs such as organic structures and internal lattices, allowing you to take advantage of the unique design flexibility provided by additive manufacturing technologies. 

 

It also allows for part consolidation, thus a single complicated shape generated by a generative technique and 3D printed may frequently replace assemblies made up of hundreds of distinct pieces.

 

 

How to Begin with Generative Design?

 

Are you unsure where to begin? Here are a few important insights to help you get started:

 

1. It's simple to get started. There isn't a steep learning curve to try generative design if you already know CAD. For well-defined, closed challenges, generative design is simple to experiment with. It is currently included in many CAD products that include 30-day trials.

 

2. Lightweighting an existing component is an excellent first project.  Assuming loads are well known, lightweight is a solid starting point for optimizing for reduced weight while preserving performance.

 

3. Divide the lengthy vision into smaller R&D initiatives. To make use of generative design and additive manufacturing, various mindsets and workflows are required.

 

It is not possible to achieve a performance-optimized, bespoke 3D printed product that is offered worldwide and at scale overnight. Most successful initiatives resemble a sequence of iterative, strategic projects that are carried out over time.

 

4. Seek knowledge and assistance from technological partners. Many software and additive firms, such as Formlabs Factory Solutions, offer teams working to assist you. Look for methods to leverage this knowledge to get started and learn rapidly.

 

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Software Applications for Generative Design

 

Individuals with CAD skills can readily transition to generative design tools. Many CAD applications now have integrated generative design tools or plug-ins, in addition to generative design-specific software.

 

However, generative design software provides users with more than just the typical capability of CAD software. These tools allow users to enter information like forces, materials, and prices into design profiles, as well as prioritize and improve components based on visualizations of design solutions.

 

But before you choose a product, it can be helpful to read blog posts that pit each solution against the other. For example, this blog post that compares Creo and SolidWorks for CAD design by TriStar is full of information you'll need to make an informed decision.

 

The following are prominent software applications with generative design features, by no means a complete list:

 

Autodesk Fusion 360
 

Fusion 360 provides users with a robust collection of modelling tools, including sketching, direct modelling, surface modelling, parametric modelling, mesh modelling, rendering, and much more. 

 

Its iterative design tools allow users to determine design standards, constraints, materials, and fabrication options to generate industrial production designs, while also allowing users to use ai and machine Learning to evaluate cloud-generated giving a positive related to visual similarities, plotlines, and filters.

 

PTC Creo Generative Design

 

Using the cloud, this programme allows users to swiftly build optimum design concepts while concurrently exploring and testing various design variations. Based on the design criteria that the user specifies, it emphasizes the iterations that best meet the user's aims. 

 

This programme promises to develop high-quality, low-cost, and manufacturable designs within the Creo design environment in less timeframe than leading rivals.

 

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nTop Platform software from nTopology

 

It gives users total control over every part of the optimization process and its outcomes. Using powerful generative tools, users may develop bespoke, repeatable processes that are suited to the specific needs of an application. 

 

Unbreakable modelling and latticing processes, topology optimization, repeatable design operations, ground design, and mechanical-thermal finite element analysis computations are among the features of this application.

 

NX from Siemens

 

In addition to generative design, the major feature of NX is digital twin technology, which guarantees users a flexible, powerful, and integrated solution that can help them expedite the creation and delivery of superior goods. 

 

NX combines design compatibility, validation, model-based definition, and other features to enable users to move products through R&D more quickly and at a lesser cost while enhancing product quality.

 

MSC Apex Generative Design from MSC Software

 

This application claims to provide customers with an end-to-end solution for producing high-precision metal components faster and with less human interaction than rivals. According to MSC Software, customers may save their initial planning and setup life of up to 80%. The programme, at a glance, blends simplicity, automatic design, import and validation, and direct output into a single procedure.

 

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Generative design is becoming increasingly important in the design of goods in a variety of sectors. Whether a corporation wants to lighten an aircraft engine bracket, make an electric wheelchair more accessible, or modify a running shoe, generative design and 3D printing are laying the groundwork for a completely optimized and customized future.

 

More uses and advantages of these creative and cutting-edge technologies will emerge as breakthroughs in AI and additive manufacturing broaden the realm of possibilities for generative design.