Despite the Pandemic, Things Are Adding Up for Autodesk in Manufacturing

Although traditional in-person software vendor conferences, such as Autodesk University, and industry events, such as RAPID and IMTS have been cancelled this year, some vendors are forging full speed ahead with product development and introductions. Autodesk is proving to be one of these companies.

We had intended on conducting in-person video interviews at RAPID 2020, but COVID-19 got in the way. However, we have been able to conduct them virtually via Zoom.

The following is based on a virtual interview we conducted with Sualp Ozel, Autodesk Senior Product Manager.

We started the conversation by asking how he and Autodesk were faring in the midst of the pandemic. He said, “We are busier than ever. Now that most of us are working from home, it feels like we’re working 24/7”.

MCADCafe Interviews Sualp Ozel, Autodesk Senior Product Manager

Founded in 1982, Autodesk’s AutoCAD quickly became the company’s flagship CAD software. And although Autodesk became best known for AutoCAD, the manufacturing industry uses Autodesk’s digital prototyping software—including Autodesk Inventor, Fusion 360, and the Autodesk Product Design and Manufacturing Suite — to visualize, simulate, and analyze real-world performance using a digital model in the design process, as well as manufacturing, both traditional and additive.

Autodesk started in the additive industry in 2014 with the Spark Fund, which was a $100 million investment announcement over multiple years to many companies that were starting up in additive manufacturing technologies. In the early days, Autodesk developed and released a product called Autodesk Meshmixer, for working with triangle meshes. It is available to anybody that wants it as a free download. At about the same time, Autodesk also joined America Makes as a platinum member.

Ozel said, “Over the years, we both developed internally and acquired many different pieces of technology to bolster our additive manufacturing portfolio. From 2014 on, we have evolved drastically”.

“Our current portfolio includes:

• Fusion 360, which includes both regular traditional design tools as well as generative design tools, and our manufacturing tools.
• Netfabb, a complete toolset that streamlines workflows and reduces build errors. It can convert and import models from many different CAD applications and create models that take advantage of additive manufacturing. It can also maximize the number of parts you can fit into each build and includes a print prep solution for anything from desktop printers all the way to the metal printers.
• Netfabb Simulation, which is our solution for process simulation, for metal powder bed and directed energy deposition.

So that’s, in a nutshell, where we are as Autodesk, with additive manufacturing”.

Autodesk Additive Manufacturing Differentiators

In such a competitive market, what sets Autodesk apart in the additive manufacturing space? Ozel said, “I would say our differentiators are categorized in two different fields: Access and Capability”.

“Access is one that Autodesk is really known for. Autodesk solutions are free to the entire education industry, and that’s been the case for as long as I can remember. That means professors, students, researchers can just download our software and start using it, and all they need is their email address and password. That’s a part of our licensing system, as well. Especially in the current environment that we’re in, this is a huge, huge enabler for educational institutions. I’ve had so much contact with professors and students in the additive field in the past few months, because everybody couldn’t get a hold of the traditional software that they were possibly using in the computer labs, but they were able to get Autodesk software and be up and running quickly”.

“On the other hand, building onto the access points, our solutions work on multiple platforms. For example, Fusion 360, works on both Windows and Mac machines, and that supports my previous point, this access. If a student or other user doesn’t necessarily have access to another operating system, they can immediately be running with one or the other”.

“And then, of course, the idea of storage and heavy computation, being available both for local resources as well as cloud resources, makes life easier for people. And the fact that the entire solution is built on a collaborative environment, which enables multiple people working on the same project, and adding commentary, and correcting each other’s mistakes makes it a collaborative access environment. That’s on the access side”.

“Access is one point, but capability is the other point. On the functionality side, from our additive solution, which includes modeling for additive as well, design for additive. Our traditional and generative design tools are widely known in the industry and things like generating multiple outcomes for different orientation, different manufacturing methods, and displaying things like costing is a big part of that capability set for additive. Once you have the design ready and when you’re ready to print it, taking it into a professional print-prep environment, and using Netfabb and Fusion to address both the needs of the average user as well as the high-end, power users”.

“Specifically, on the metal side, just designing something and preparing it is not enough – you have to simulate it, and our process simulation solutions are the best in class, multi-scale processing relation tools in the market with a full thermal mechanical analysis and adaptive meshing to solve really complex problems in a high performance and in a speedy way, both for powder fusion and directed energy deposition. And of course, at the end of the day, you’re still left with a part, that is not finished. You still have to machine that part to finish it. It could be surface finish, it could be adding holes, anything, anything you can think of. Our inspection and machining tools, that are also part of the portfolio, that’s built into Fusion 360, and it allows basically finishing the part that you started with”.

Simulating Additive Parts in Context

When Autodesk Netfabb Simulation simulates a part, it is simulated in the context of a specific 3D printer and specific materials.

Ozel said, “Yes, we have a long list of additive machine vendors that we are partners with. What we have is both the machine, which basically dictates the build platform in terms of X, Y and Z axes, as well as the material. In the metals, it could be things like titaniums, Inconels, or aluminums, etc. And then, the settings which you’re printing with. It’s the power, the speed, the thickness and things like that. So, when all of those are combined as inputs into a thermo-mechanical analysis, that’s when you get things like distortion and recorded blade interference predictions or support structure failure predictions, and so on and so forth. And those all feed into the simulation and are outcomes of the simulation”.

New Autodesk Additive Manufacturing Announcements

During the interview, Ozel said he had a new announcement wanted to share.

“It’s really a two-fold. One is our current focus, and the other one is what are some of the things that are coming”.

“Our current focus is enabling new modeling and manufacturing methods that support the entire design to make offering that we have inside of Fusion 360. That means things like additional manufacturing methods, such as hybrid manufacturing methods, which involves slicing models, generating tool paths, controlling the robot arms that combine the extruders or deposition tools, by bringing in technology from things like Fusion 360, Netfabb, and PowerMill, which are parts of our comprehensive portfolio of manufacturing products”.

“The other focus that we have is adding new printers in our partner list, and MES integrations, so that anybody can plan and execute how their factory is going to work. That’s a main focus.

Last summer, we announced the release of our metal additive print prep directly in Fusion 360. Whatever is designed, can put it in a metal printer, whether it is a $100,000 or a $1 million printer and create tool paths, create a file, and print it”.

“This past winter, during Formnext, we announced our new geometry design kernel research, the Autodesk Volumetric Kernel, which allows for these architected materials, architected geometries. It could be multi-material, multi-color, multi-property. That’s an entirely new design paradigm that we’re working on and we announced. That is not a released product, but a technology that we’re working on. In March, we announced the ability for Fusion, to print on Fused filament Fabrication (FFF) printers. With this new capability Fusion has become a slicer for FFF technology”.

“Finally, we recently shipped the 2021 version for Netfabb Simulation. As part of that, we announced our partnership with EOS and Additive Industries, by releasing Inconel 718 process parameters as an input to the simulation for the EOS and Additive Industries machines.We now have basically two machine vendor specific inputs to simulation in addition to the ones that we’ve already had before”.

“We announced the capability of creating compensated shapes for a directed energy deposition. We’ve always had that for powder-bed fusion processes. Now, we can do the same for directed energy deposition”. Since we interviewed Sualp Ozel in May and we back checked in with him at the time of this article to see how the Netfabb 2021 release was coming along and found out that Netfabb 2021 was released on 6/2/2020, as well. From what we can see on the what’s new content, it looks like an exciting release and is ready for prime time.

It’s pretty obvious that even with the restrictions and limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, additive manufacturing technologies at Autodesk are moving full speed ahead for meeting the requirements and demands of the future.

Tags: Additive Industries, additive manufacturing, AM, America Makes, Autodesk, Autodesk Meshmixer, EOS, Fusion 360, Netfabb, Netfabb Simulation, Spark Fund

Category: Interview

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