In recent years the concept of simulation-driven design; specifically topology optimization and generative design have gained significant popularity. solidThinking excels at providing innovative tools created specifically for this space. Design simulation helps manufacturers to digitally model designs to represent a real-world component to validate an intended product and determine its manufacturability. It helps to reduce prototyping costs, and cycle time to market by enabling design engineers and product designers to design more innovative products faster and easier than ever before.

Topology optimization specifically helps these users to balance material against the stiffness of a part to create stronger and lighter weight parts. While some CAD tools have introduced topology optimization as a feature, one solution stands apart. That is solidThinking Inspire. Inspire allows product designers, engineers, and even people not expert in designing or engineering, to generate and investigate structurally efficient parts and product designs – quickly and easily. In fact, evangelists will argue that Inspire is the fastest and most robust tool on the market.

solidThinking and Additive Manufacturing

Generally, Inspire users to use the tool in the concept design phase of the design process to generate the ideal shape as early as possible. Inspire works by creating a material layout within a given design space, for a given set of loads and constraints in the most efficient way to meet the required performance targets. The business benefits are obvious: reduction in weight, cost and time to market. What’s more, Inspire has a natural synergy with additive manufacturing technology. And as additive manufacturing continues its explosive trends, additive manufacturers seek out tools like Inspire to help them produce unique organic designs.

From Concept to Reality with Continuous Improvement

From optimizing parts for Formula SAE competition vehicles to designing robotic arms that meet and exceed cycle time, manufacturing and operational targets, Inspire helps engineers successfully tackle and resolve some of the most challenging engineering problems.

And since its launch, solidThinking has continued to make impressive enhancements to its technology, especially through its introduction of modeling tools that allow users to generate true engineering surfaces beyond mesh-based forms. Some of the groundbreaking features in Inspire include:

• Topology optimization
• Topography and Gauge optimization
• The introduction of Partition and Bolt pretension tools
• Motion analysis results that can be extracted for use in FE analysis and optimization
• The ability to define forces, torques, and g-loads in terms of X, Y and X components

And this is just the tip of the iceberg, our friends at solidThinking have shared that there’s more to come in 2018. Without revealing too much detail, the Marketing team hinted at the introduction of a lattice optimization and overhang shape control features for additive manufacturing.

solidThinking products including Inspire, Evolve, Activate, and Extrude are available at academic discounts at Studica.

Written by: Yvette Felix, Marketing Manager at solidThinking