MCADCafe Editorial 
Jeff Rowe
Jeffrey Rowe has over 40 years of experience in all aspects of industrial design, mechanical engineering, and manufacturing. On the publishing side, he has written over 1,000 articles for CAD, CAM, CAE, and other technical publications, as well as consulting in many capacities in the design … More » Frustum Generate: A New Take On Generative Design and Topology Optimization?October 4th, 2018 by Jeff Rowe
Frustum Inc., developer of what it calls the industry’s first interactive generative design solution, this week announced a new release of its Generate software. According to the company, Generate represents a new paradigm for design, interactive generative design, which fundamentally alters how products are modeled for manufacture by allowing engineers to interact and iterate in real time with generative design models. As a result, engineers can develop multiple well designed and optimized models to identify the best solution literally in minutes versus hours or days. The origin of the company’s name was kind of intriguing to me because a frustum is a mathematical term and is the portion of a cone or pyramid that remains after its upper part has been cut off by a plane parallel to its base, or that is intercepted between two such planes. Frustum examples include:
If all the edges are forced to be identical, a frustum becomes a uniform prism. OK, enough of the fun with math, let’s get back to Frustum’s technology . . .
A General Electric Bracket With Frustum’s Generative Design and Topology Optimization Applied To It Designed to meet the complex needs of design for manufacturing, Generate is a 3D design software that provides interactivity with generative design models. It combines the creativity of the engineer with artificial intelligence to significantly shorten the time of designing products – effectively delivering a near real-time interaction with a generative design model, generating designs by functional requirements and producing a result that is ready for manufacture. Parts and products designed through this process are [theoretically] lighter, stronger, and use less materials than those designed using traditional CAD software.
“With Generate, designers and engineers can interactively specify the functional requirements of their design and the design will automatically be modeled to meet those requirements. The design output is functional and does not have to be remodeled in CAD,” said Jesse Coors-Blankenship, CEO, Frustum Inc. “We developed Generate on a multi-threaded architecture that was built from the ground-up to deliver faster design output by leveraging both CPU and GPU computing optionally. Generate will redefine how manufacturers get products to market, reduce materials costs and improve the overall performance of products.” Built on its patented generative engine, TrueSOLID, Generate couples advanced topology optimization and simulation algorithms with real-time interaction to produce high-performing mechanical designs. It is functionally parametric and facilitates blending of generative geometry to traditional surface-based CAD with engineering precision. The technology is currently being commercially licensed to Siemens PLM software and integrated into Siemens NX and Siemens SolidEdge. Although he was traveling all this week and was a bit under the weather, Jesse Coors-Blankenship, Frustum’s CEO kindly answered a few questions I posed to him: MCADCafe: How does Frustum define generative design? MCADCafe: How does Frustum’s definition/philosophy differ appreciably from competitors, such as Autodesk and nTopology?
Our philosophy is that Generative design should be interactive so that users are in the driver seat of the generative process. What we mean is that at any moment during the generative process the user can interact with it and alter it by adjusting their functional requirements, like physical requirements, manufacturing requirements, or even aesthetic details. In the case of Autodesk Fusion 360, they also have topology optimization running to produce the geometry. However, the compute process is distributed on the cloud for what they refer to as idea generation. The result is an inspirational model that needs to be remodeled in CAD. Conversely, in Generate, the process is not cloud dependent and the result is functional requiring no CAD remodeling. In the case of nTopology, they are singularly focused lattice tools and at this time do not sell a topology optimization solution, whereas Generate is both a topology optimization and a lattice solution. MCADCafe: Is GENERATE a true geometric kernel and software component?
Yes, TrueSOLID is the name of the generative engine that powers Generate and the Siemens NX plugin, Topology Optimization for Designers. TrueSOLID is made of three parts: an implicit modeling kernel, a multi-physics simulation framework, and optimization framework. The three parts working together are what enable Interactive Generative Design. MCADCafe: Will the technology be available for a wider range of CAD products, such as SOLIDWORKS or CATIA?
It’s certainly a possibility. MCADCafe: What are the various price points?
$10k for Topology Optimization
$10k for Lattices $16k for both Modules The new Windows-based GENERATE design software includes the following features:
The GENERATE design software is now available. For more information about GENERATE or interactive generative design, request a demo. It sure seems like generative design and topology optimization have garnered a lot of attention recently, and for good reason – they are both interesting developments and directions for CAD, which sure could use some real innovation. We’ll continue to observe how generative design and topology optimization continue to evolve and proliferate by a wider range of engineering software developers. Upcoming Event: 3D Collaboration & Interoperability Congress 2018With their annual conference, our friends at Action Engineering are addressing the fact that products must be built by designing, manufacturing, and maintaining quality at each step of content generation. Adequacy of information across the enterprise can be checked by software and humans. MBD software tools automate and resolve execution deficiencies while revealing errors that require human attention. New procedures written to take advantage of a digital transformation inside Industry 4.0 require persistent consistency to influence organizational culture that naturally resists change. Speakers at the 3D Collaboration and Interoperability Congress (3D CIC) will move this conversation forward on October 15-18, 2018 in Golden, Colorado. The mix of presenters is as varied as any supply-chain team with whom you will ever work. Likewise, each presentation focuses on real-life implementation challenges and enterprise accountability needed to get MBD across the finish line. For More Information: 3D Collaboration & Interoperability Congress 2018 Tags: Frustrum, Frustrum GENERATE, generative design, topology optimization |
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