When to expect AI-powered simulations and end-to-end design, simulation and print tools.
Disclaimer: Shawn Wasserman is a former employee of Ansys and holds minor stocks in the organization.
In late October and early November, respectively, Ansys announced new AI and additive manufacturing tools that will improve workflows and democratize simulation. The first announcement follows the addition of Ansys SimAI, a physics-agnostic, cloud-enabled, AI-powered simulation tool, and Ansys AI+, a series of extensions to add AI functionality to existing Ansys tools.
The second announcement comments on how the Ansys and Materialise partnership will offer an end-to-end digital workflow to solve the challenges engineers face when using additive manufacturing tools. This workflow effectively connects Ansys Additive Suite with Materialise Magics.
The AI Tools Coming to Ansys Fall 2023 and Early 2024
Back in September, Ansys announced the release of AnsysGPT, an AI-powered virtual assistant that uses natural language processors (NLP) to help simulation users with their tech support issues. A month and a half later, the simulation giant has doubled-down on its AI investments with Ansys SimAI and Ansys AI+.
Ansys SimAI will enable engineers to use AI algorithms to run simulations—significantly reducing the time to results. Engineers can feed the tool simulation results from previous designs, even if the structures and shapes are inconsistent, to produce a machine learning model that helps predict simulation results with analogous geometries.
Ansys SimAI uses the shape of a design as input. As a result, users don’t have to describe designs using a set of geometric parameters. This makes it possible to train the algorithm on similar designs so it can predict results for other geometries.
Because Ansys SimAI is physics neutral, it will be usable to many engineers in many industries. Engineers will predict product performance—even when using complex simulation—in minutes enabling them to assess the design space faster and more thoroughly.
Ansys AI+, on the other hand, will extend and add AI and machine learning features to other tools available in the Ansys portfolio. The first ones to be released include the desktop version of Ansys Granta MI AI+ and Ansys optiSLang AI+. These improvements will enable engineers to use machine learning algorithms while running optimizations, sensitivity studies and design explorations within a given software.
As for when users can expect to use these new tools, Ansys SimAI will launch in early 2024 and AI+ versions of products will be added to the portfolio on a rolling basis starting this fall.
An End-to-End AM Workflow from Design to Simulation and Build
Traditionally, additive manufacturing build and data preparations were done in one software platform while simulations were done in another. For instance, when a build defect is found using Magics simulation, the data would need to be transferred so engineers can update the build files.
This means users need to understand both platforms and how to transfer information between them. This also complicated the workflow and introduced the risk of errors. Ansys and Materialise aim to eliminate this issue by combining the Ansys Additive Suite and Magics into one workflow.
Additive Suite will enable engineers to design products for additive manufacturing as well as simulate powder bed fusion, directed energy deposition and metal sintering. Meanwhile, Magics will help engineers prepare their data and builds for the additive manufacturing process by assessing builds, importing files, fixing and improving geometry and lattices, generating reports, nesting parts and optimizing printing speeds and processes.
This workflow will be previewed at Formnext 2023 and will be available to engineers come Q2 2024.
