Generative Design

[Jaime_Lee]

Post topics about Generative Design here.

[Patriot_1776]

Well, it's an interesting CONCEPT, and looks like it makes interesting "organic" designs, but they look pretty much like they're not manufacturable.  Despite people's love for the whiz-bang technology of 3D printing, it is NOT even a low-volume production method, the materials are limited, and the material properties aren't what you get with billet.  3D printing CAN be used in certain instances to get shapes not possible with traditional methods, but in practice it's almost never used to make real parts except for cheap plastic parts that see no loading.  I can see perhaps using the software to get a rough idea of where material needs to be, but you'll never produce organic shapes like that in any volume.  In addition, you can't cast (except for maybe lost-wax), or especially forge shapes like that to get the properties/grain structure you want for strength.

Interesting videos, but, I really can't see this being used much due to the limitations.

[Jaime_Lee]

Thank you for your assessment!  @Patriot_1776  I wonder if anyone else has an topics related to Generative Design they would like to start.  This post I started was actually a "placeholder" so the label would show up 😉

[Patriot_1776]

Ah, well, now they have their first comments!  🙂

[lwestbrook]

Hi @Patriot_1776 

I definitely appreciate where you're coming from. That's one of the reasons that we've actually worked pretty hard to add manufacturing criteria such as pull direction, draft angle, extrude direction/angle, etc., so that Generative Design can produce designs that can be cast and milled, not just 3D printed. It's important that generative design is compatible with traditional manufacturing methods rather than the much more limited additive manufacturing applications.

I'm not sure if you've had a chance to play around with it at all, but if you find that our implementations to target traditional manufacturing methods still fall short, I'd love to get your thoughts there to see how we can make it more viable for those use cases. (Might be a good opportunity to start a new thread with the Generative Design label 🙂)

Luke

[Patriot_1776]

'Afternoon Luke!  (...MUST...refrain...from "force" jokes...LOL)

No, I haven't looked at it from a user perspective.  To be honest, I'm not even sure we have it to play with.  What would be awesome, is to be able to pick a method of manufacture, and let it do it's thing, instead of getting the "organic" shapes we can't actually use.  I thin if I actually used this, I'd have to use it as a Skeleton model, and then use that to drive an actual machined model.  The machined part couldn't be quite as light, but I think you could get close knowing where you needed material and the cross-section, and then adjust so you could get a cutting tool in there.  I'm not in Aerospace anymore, so, attention to weight is not a major concern here, reducing the time it takes to machine (set-up time, material removal time) is since we generally make one-offs and move on to the next thing.  Also, for the most part, our parts aren't highly stressed and so we really can just "throw Iron at it" as us Olde Timers say.  Also, I'm not a degreed Engineer, but, I think I could at least do the rough setup using loads they provided and get some preliminary answers/designs.

It looks cool though!