SolidThinking--Docking 3D printing, achieve lightweight design

1. SolidThinking Product Overview

SolidThinking is committed to exploring the world's leading design concepts and innovative technology. In recent years, the rapid development of products, the two software SolidThinking Inspire and SolidThinking Evolve in product optimization and design, to provide customers with highly constructive solutions to help users design better performance, lighter quality, more cost, more Beautiful products, in a number of areas to obtain a wide range of users affirmed.

SolidThinking Inspire provides innovative solutions for design engineers with "simulation-driven design". It uses Altair's advanced OptiStruct optimizer to generate the desired shape based on a given design space, material properties, and stress requirements. Designers can redesign based on optimization results. Then the optimization results or reconstruction geometry can also be analyzed and verified.

SolidThinking Evolve provides designers with a complete 3D modeling and rendering environment. In the same modeling environment, NURBS modeling, polygon modeling and solid modeling are combined, and all three modeling methods are based on the Parasolid entity core. Designers can build any complex geometric shapes and stabilize docking follow-up processes. At the same time, designers can also use Evolve advanced historical structure process function, constantly push the model, the final product performance and model output.

2.About 3D printing technology

3D printing technology is one of the most popular topics at home and abroad in recent years, from consumer products to art, from automobile manufacturing to aerospace and other fields can be seen in the wide application of the technology. 3D printing is called "Additive manufacturing technology (Additive Manufacturing)", the use of material accumulation method of manufacturing entities. Compared to the traditional method of material removal in the manufacturing process, it is a "bottom-up" manufacturing method. Its advantage lies in the use of "just need" materials for manufacturing, saving material costs, while achieving any complex physical form, without too much consideration of the manufacturing process constraints. In the small batch customization, complex product realization, prototype experiment and so has a very obvious advantage.

In fact, not all products are suitable for 3D printing, the use of this technology has many restrictions. For example, when the product has such as "the structure is very complex", "small batch custom", "lightweight design" and other needs, the use of 3D printing technology to become meaningful, or use traditional manufacturing to achieve more cost savings. So, in what areas to use 3D printing technology, how to maximize the effectiveness of 3D printing, it is necessary to think clearly.

3. SolidThinking Inspire with 3D printing

For the nature of 3D printing, Altair's first solution is to use TopThore optimization with SolidThinking Inspire. The technology can meet the performance of the premise, the most streamlined material distribution in the most reasonable position, so as to obtain a light weight, good performance structure.

3.1 onSolidThinking Inspire topology optimization technology

When designing a new structure, structural engineers rely on their own intuition, experience and knowledge. If the problems are easy to solve, they often need to open the laptop can quickly think of the solution in the brain. But if the packaging space is too complex and multiple loads are applied from three dimensions, it is not enough in most cases to rely solely on engineering design intuition. It is too early to apply traditional simulation tools at the design stage, and the initial geometries based on existing parts are often ineffective.

Structural optimization technology for a component to produce the best material layout, to help many manufacturers to create a more perfect product. In the early 1990s, Altair introduced topology optimization technology into the field of computer-aided engineering (CAE). Since then, Altair's optimization software, OptiStruct, has become a key technology recognized for the development of highly engineered products such as passenger and passenger cars. Until recently, industry companies had to apply topological optimization techniques after creating computer-aided design (CAD) geometry and required designers to be proficient in the finite element analysis (FEA) to be applied. Therefore, only a long time with the knowledge of CAE engineers to use the technology.

The advent of SolidThinking Inspire, then this technology is fully universal, even without CAE based can also apply the technology. SolidThinking Inspire, developed by Solidair, a wholly owned subsidiary of Altair, is a new tool for designers and structural engineers. The structure-efficient concept that it generates can be easily exported to all major CAD software and continues to be designed as the final product. Novice users can take up to a few hours of training to master this tool, and many users do not need any training at all.

Inspire was used in the early design phase of the design cycle, taking into account the structural design elements at the outset. Usually the previous design process is: conceptual design - structural design - engineering verification and structural optimization, and structural unreasonable possible until the third link was found, and then all the work to be returned to the first link to re- Start, so that repeated changes in order to achieve better results. But the application of Inspire, that is usually in the third part of the application of the optimization method introduced into the concept of design links, so that design engineers in a simple way to master this method to design a reasonable structure. Compared with the traditional "design - demonstration - redesign" ideas, this process has laid a good foundation for the previous period, saving a lot of repetitive work and improving the efficiency of the whole process.

Inspire in the design process flow as shown below:

Step 1: Import the physical geometry from other geometric modeling software, or create a geometric model in Inspire.

Step 2: the characteristics of the model to simplify, remove the chamfer, holes and other unnecessary features.

Step 3: according to design purposes, to give the nature of the material. Apply load and condition. Set optimization conditions.

Step 4: Get the results. And analyze the results of rationality. If the structure is not reasonable, increase the manufacturing process, structural symmetry and other conditions, once again to optimize the calculation.

Step 5: Analyze the new structure directly in Inspire to determine the feasibility.

Step 6: Redefine geometry in CAD software according to optimization results.

Sketch or import geometric modelsFeature simplificationSet the material and conditionsOptimize and determine shapeDetermine performance (optional)Redefine geometry

3.2 SolidThinking Inspire in traditional manufacturing applications

Inspire quickly gained recognition from many companies and was widely used in the design department. Many customers take this opportunity to integrate the advantages of topology optimization technology into product design without having to make radical changes to the development process. After Inspire produces the ideal material layout, the design concept will be exported to the preferred CAD tool, allowing the designer to create the appropriate geometry before the standard new enterprise validation process for new parts, including virtual verification and physical verification.

For example, RACE FACE, the world's leading designer and manufacturer of bicycle products, uses Inspire to design a new generation of bicycle crank design. Race Face discovers that Inspire can help people to better understand the role of material configuration in the design process, thus greatly optimizing the design process and speed up the design speed. At the same time, Inspire built-in manufacturing constraints can help them in the 2D forging process based on the design. In order to generate the concept of crank arm, Race Face first introduced a design space into the Inspire, and then applied material, load conditions and manufacturing constraints for stripping. Inspire generated in the concept and Race Face in the past use of the I-beam structure has a very significant difference. Through the use of Inspire, Race Face greatly enhance the speed of the product design process, while the use of unique design to build new products more solid than ever. In the detailed design of the CAD, you can first generate the ideal concept, which helps to reduce the design iteration; the same time, with the symmetry and stripping direction manufacturing constraints, the project team can design for forging technology to achieve the components.

Race Face Use Inspire to create a new crank arm

3.3 SolidThinking Inspire docking 3D printing advantage

As mentioned above, topology optimization techniques provided by Inspire provide engineers with the highest performance in a given load and condition. However, the use of traditional manufacturing methods, we have to consider the impact of many manufacturing factors, such as stripping direction, symmetry, and these manufacturing constraints may affect the optimized product performance. At this point, the engineer will balance the two. And in the production of materials can be fully concerned about the performance of products, do not take into account the traditional manufacturing constraints, even if the optimization results are very complex, material manufacturing can also be easily achieved.

For example, Renishaw, a well-known British refill manufacturer, has worked with bike manufacturer Empire Cycles to design and manufacture the world's first full 3D print bike. In this project, the bicycle seat part of the use of the SolidThinking Inspire topology optimization, the optimization results have been redesigned to titanium alloy print out, compared to the original seat bar quality reduced by 45%. In this case, the Inspire is optimized to ensure that the support needs are met in the case of the most material. Because the optimization result is not the standard structure, the new design is difficult to achieve with the traditional manufacturing methods, therefore, the metal 3D printing as the optimal manufacturing methods, the advantages of lightweight structure to maximize.

SolidThinking Inspire Topology Optimization Aided Design 3D Print Bike Joysticks

In the world's leading engineering consultancy company Arup's architectural parts design project, Inspire docking 3D printing has played a decisive role. Optimized final results are reduced by 75% relative to the quality of the original parts while ensuring the same external load as the original parts.

4. SolidThinking Evolve with 3D printing

Most of the optimization results obtained with SolidThinking Inspire are complex, and it is very difficult to implement with traditional CAD software. At this point, SolidThinking Evolve provides a different from the traditional modeling methods, we call PolyNURBS, that is, polygon modeling to achieve complex surface. Because Evolve is based on the Parasolid entity core, the model built in that way can be used directly for engineering applications and docking any CAD software downstream.

Inspire get optimization results (left), Evolve for geometric reconstruction (right)

In the well-known multinational group RUAG satellite stent design project, the designer first through the topological optimization to find the optimal stent structure, because the optimization results modeling complex, this project uses Evolve polygon modeling method to build geometric model. And then the design results for accurate drilling, construction and other physical operations, and with other components for assembly. Finally, the stent structure is realized by metal 3D printing technology.

SolidThinking Evolve Aided Design 3D Print Satellite Stand

5.Conclusion

Through the above case can be seen, SolidThinking two software with 3D printing use, you can form a high-quality design process to help designers consider the traditional design methods can not be involved or difficult to solve the problem, the product lightweight design to the extreme , While also ensuring product performance.

SolidThinking product docking 3D printing design process

At present, this efficient design method has been in the aerospace, automotive, manufacturing and other industries and praise. We believe that SolidThinking docking 3D printing, will be in more areas and the industry to play its great potential.