Elevating Design and Cutting Costs - Structural Lightweighting

13 Jan, 2021

By utilizing a computational modeling approach to design, designers can now leverage the mixed data-sources seen in the image above, amongst others involved in modern engineering, to create a lighter, stronger, and smarter part.

Fueled by computational modeling and the ability to synthesize data and leverage it within a design, coupled with technology to create complex geometries, industries are able to deliver more cost efficient parts without sacrificing performance.

3D Printing

- product design

This article was first published on

ntopology.com

With an ever changing world, we have required that the products that we use every day keep pace. We have asked that they be faster, stronger, smaller, and lighter. Better designed parts, lends to better performing parts; furthermore, more efficiency in our daily lives, right?

Various industries such as aerospace, automotive, and consumer products are continuing to push the boundaries of design to accommodate our fast paced environment. Lighter and smarter parts not only have a beneficial impact on part performance, but they also correlate to increased safety, decreased manufacturing and operating costs, and improved environmental sustainability.

A New Era of Design

nTopology recognized a paradigm shift in design; consequently, we introduced a unique approach to modeling, which has been leveraged by additive manufacturing processes to open the door to an unparalleled approach to part design. By incorporating nTop Platform into an organization’s engineering workflow, engineers are now equipped with the tools needed to create complex, high performing parts in significantly less time and cost.

The ability to incorporate the modeling and manufacturing techniques made possible by additive manufacturing have been leveraged by engineers in various industries today. Designers within the aerospace and automotive industry have produced composite panels using foam or honeycomb cores to reduce weight in structures. The consumer products industry has found value in lightweight parts in improving the ergonomic experience for the end user such as a lattice helmet liner capable of reducing impact forces and optimizing fit and comfort for athletes. Industries are continually discovering exciting opportunities and innovative ways to lightweight parts. Applying variable shelling, unique lattice structures, or structural ribbing are other techniques designers have utilized to produce lighter parts while still maintaining stiffness and strength.

Not only are design processes achieving more complexity, we are also able to incorporate a more intelligent methodology to part design. Brought to fruition by computational modeling, engineers can introduce a multi-faceted approach to design by synthesizing various data such as FEA (Finite Element Analysis) results or real measurements such as scan data into a single high performance part.

A computational modeling approach allows engineers to capture all of the valuable engineering data within an organization, whether it be knowledge of design experts or simulation experts, and combine it to create intelligent and adaptive engineering models that transform industry standards.

Please join me on August 25th for a webinar in which I will delve into these various lightweighting techniques and nTop Platform’s approach to design for additive manufacturing.

This article was first published on the nTopology blog.

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How to Get the Most out of Topology Optimization

With the rise of Additive manufacturing, topology optimization has come to the forefront. But how can this tool be used to its fullest potential in engineering design? In this blog post, you will learn how to use next-gen design tools to enhance your workflows and processes.

Andrew Sartorelli

fromnTopology

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3D Printing

- product design

With a name like nTopology, people often assume that we only do topology optimization. And while that isn’t quite true (have you seen our implicit modeling?), we are doing some incredible things to remove the hassle from topology optimization-driven workflows. While the engineering and mathematics behind this optimization process have been around for decades, with the rise of industrial additive manufacturing and the limitless complexity that it enables, we’ve seen exponential growth in the utilization of topology optimization.

But with that growth in usage comes an ever-increasing understanding of the frustrating limitations that occur when traditional design techniques are combined with topology optimization. However, next-generation design tools like nTopology can help ease away those limitations to enable engineers to create better-performing parts, faster.

What is Topology Optimization?

Topology optimization is a numerical optimization method that optimizes the placement of material inside a user-defined design space. By providing boundary conditions and constraints, objectives such as maximizing the stiffness of a component can be obtained. This method has seen a significant increase in adoption with the advances in computing power accessible to every engineer and the industrialization of additive manufacturing. In a general sense, topology optimization iterates through and removes the unnecessary material to identify the most optimal load path.

Bracket design space and unmodified topology optimization result.

nTopology currently uses a density-based approach to topology optimization. After applying loads, constraints, and optimization objectives, one ends up with an element density field, which can vary between 0, indicating no material, and 1 indicating solid material. The user is then able to determine a threshold between those values to generate t

Image: A hiding place for my aquarium. Designed in nTop Platform

Texturing for Additively Manufactured Products with nTop Platform

From the subtle stipple of your laptop’s casing of to the geometric grip of your toothbrush handle, texture is a key consideration in the design process for any and every physical product. Read further to learn how I use nTop Platform to apply texturing to products I design.

Alex Ju

fromnTopology

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3D Printing

- product design

An important consumer expectation borne of a lifetime surrounded by precisely finished, injection molded parts, surface texturing in additive manufacturing further serves final part quality by helping to mask layer lines and other potential defects borne of the 3D printing process.

Today, texturing models for 3D printing is typically done with bump maps, a deceptively difficult endeavor. A part covered with what looks like a simple stipple pattern actually usually consists of millions of triangles, making for an awfully unruly workflow. Next, there is the struggle of tiling bump maps in a manner that perfectly lines up, which often becomes an issue when the pattern has to repeat 4.3 times instead of 4 to achieve the right scale. Add to all that the challenge of applying that bump map with minimal distortion on a very uneven surface, and you end up with a texturing workflow where Task Manager is your most used application.

Texturing examples designed in nTop Platform

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, people are generally able to quickly discern repeating patterns. That is part of the appeal of real leather—being a natural material, not only does the pattern never repeat along the item itself, but it also makes that item unique and distinguishable from any other copies of it.

Recommended reading: How to Get the Most out of Topology Optimization

Texturing with nTop

As I’ve brought nTop into my design process, I’ve found that generating textures in nToplogy instead has a ton of benefits. First and foremost, I don’t have to worry about triangles until I’ve fully finessed the part and am ready to export to an STL. Editing textures and creating variants are also significantly easier, not only because I don’t have to render a full mesh for each version but also because the interface makes adjustments as simple as typin

Elevating Design and Cutting Costs - Structural Lightweighting

Fueled by computational modeling and the ability to synthesize data and leverage it within a design, coupled with technology to create complex geometries, industries are able to deliver more cost efficient parts without sacrificing performance.

A New Era of Design

Search for articles and topics on Wevolver

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