Unlocking viable design possibilities has never been easier with generative design and automated modeling.
Autodesk has sponsored this post.
The role of a design engineer has always been about solving problems. Whether designing a new product or improving an existing one, the job is one where the finish line is clearly marked, but the path to that finish line is murky, marred with potholes, and complicated with wrong turns. Engineers methodically investigate each of these paths, knowing that most will lead to frustration and failure. But for every failure, the path to success becomes easier to see.
For all the advancements in technology available to improve the efficiency of engineers, this core workflow remains essentially unchanged since the dawn of the profession: discover a problem, apply experience and intellect to make an educated guess at the solution, fail (sometimes miserably), learn and then iterate until you succeed.
In any competitive market sector, the timeline of this process dictates a product’s success far more than the usefulness of the product itself.
Automating 3D Modeling
One of these software suites is Autodesk Fusion 360, an integrated cloud-based CAD, CAM, CAE, and PCB software with two main features aimed at automated design for manufacturing: generative design and automated modeling.
“Automated modeling and generative design are about driving productivity in the design process,” says Mike Smell, Senior Product Manager for Fusion 360 at Autodesk. “Automated modeling does that through rapid shape exploration, whereas generative design does that by combining multiple objectives into a single exploration. We’re building both of these applications to align with what we’re trying to do with Fusion 360, which is building an end-to-end product development platform for industrial machinery and consumer products.”
These tools change the traditional design process. An engineer no longer has to repeat the part validation process every time a new design iteration didn’t meet the performance requirements.
“We’re putting all those requirements into the problem statement up front, and then we’re letting the system go off and build solutions for those problems, so the designs that come out already meet your first-level requirements,” says Smell.
Generative Design: Part Validation in a Snap
Generative design is the heavy lifter of the two features, and it is a fee-based add-on to the standard Fusion 360 platform. It was developed for engineers that are doing true product development work of performance-oriented products. And it already has some high-powered users leveraging the technology.
“Generative design, paired with additive manufacturing, can be completely disruptive to our industry,” says Kevin Quin, Director of Additive Design and Manufacturing at General Motors Corp. “It can deliver designs that could not have been possible with traditional manufacturing methods and delivers functionally optimized designs that can offer 40 percent mass savings, stronger parts, and deliver performance to our customers that they couldn’t have even realized before.”
Engineers input key parameters at the beginning of the process and let the software evaluate them simultaneously to develop several solutions that meet all of those criteria. It produces manufacturing-aware, physics-informed, and performative design options for the engineer to explore further.
“This allows engineering teams to do what they’re good at–interpreting results against the factors that drive decision-making. Is it performance? Is it weight? Is it cost? Is it manufacturing availability or material use? It becomes less about them spending time tweaking shapes,” says Smell.
Traditionally, engineers try to design the solution and then work to validate it. With generative design, they are documenting the problem, and the software produces validated solutions to be evaluated. However, this does not mean the engineer is no longer a vital part of the design process. In fact, they are as important as ever.
“Having real usage data means our engineers can calculate the specific requirements,” says Sebastian Flügel, project leader at EDAG Group, a multinational engineering services firm based in Arbon, Switzerland. “The big change [from the old process] is that generative design creates the geometry automatically, and with Fusion 360, we can automatically recalculate these products, and we can create new solutions based on the changed conditions.”
With generative design technology, the whole design engineering process is flipped upside down from what it has historically been. It invites the engineer to address the problem of ‘What are you trying to solve?’ instead of ‘How do you think you’ll solve what you know you’re trying to solve?’
Automated Modeling: Modeling at Your Fingertips
Automated modeling is generative design’s more relaxed but capable sibling, and it will be free to use for anyone with a standard Fusion 360 subscription. It’s Autodesk’s way of exposing some of the concepts of generative design to the mass market, and it carries out that task in a couple of distinct ways. It has far fewer inputs and offers much higher performance at an earlier stage in the process.
While generative design in Fusion 360 exists in its own workspace, Automated Modeling sits in the Design workspace right next to extrude, fillet and loft. As you’re going through the design process, rather than spending time creating several sketches, planes, and lofts to make a sophisticated shape, you can use automated modeling to do it in a couple of clicks. And after just a couple of minutes, you get a fully editable t-spline that you can start ideating and refining into its final shape.
Transforming Workflows
Any tool that gives engineers access to this amount of computing power can have a transformative effect, not just on the engineer’s workflow but on the company using the tools. Generative design has built-in knowledge of all sorts of common manufacturing and production processes and how those processes interact with the product being designed. Companies can use this to explore the validity of new manufacturing techniques or to change materials to something more readily available to protect against supply chain disruptions.
“It makes it easy to start exploring outside of your tribal knowledge domain,” says Smell. “If you’ve always built products from sheet metal because you don’t know how to design for additive, or don’t know how to design for milling, pretty quickly the tool could help you build a design well suited for those other methods that may be higher performance, lighter weight and easier to manufacture, making it more appealing to new and existing customers.”
To learn more about generative design and automated modeling in Fusion 360, visit Autodesk.com.
