Editor’s Pick: Solver Optimizes Lattice Structures for 3D Printing

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

You gotta hand to it 3D printing technology. It lets you design and make stuff that can be impossible or too expensive to do with traditional manufacturing methods. You know, things like internal conformal cooling lines in molds or one-off designs that nobody thunked up before you.

But it’s not all beer and skittles. Designing hollow shapes with complex external geometry and lattice structures is a barren source of amusement. Simply put, the status quo is to apply lattice structures to geometry rather than systematically analyzing where to best place materials and lattice structures. This cramps your talents by forcing you to accommodate the constraints of your design software rather than designing to exploit the strengths of your 3D printing technology. Alas, that’s just how it has been. Until now.

Altair Engineering recently announced that the latest release of its OptiStruct structural analysis solver has new features that extend topology optimization tools to designers working with lattice structures in 3D printing design. And what does that mean for you?

The short answer is you now have analysis tools that help you determine and optimize material distribution in designs intended for 3D printing. In part, it means you can figure out where your design needs more material and where it doesn’t before you place lattice structures. This will enable you to create optimized, structurally efficient solid designs that leverage lattice structures with varying volumes of materials and smooth transitions.

The new OptiStruct capabilities also let you study lattice performance under loads like tension and compression as well as explore a lattice structure’s fatigue life. You can, for that matter, investigate the relationship between material density and part performance or consider phenomena like buckling behavior and thermal performance.

This sounds pretty neat. Topology optimization brought to 3D printing design should boost your design freedom, shorten your design process and enable you to explore design ideas that were not previously possible. As far as I know, you have not been able to do what the new OptiStruct tools for 3D printing topology optimization enable you to do, so it should also be a whole lot of fun to use.

There’s a lot more to learn about OptiStruct’s new solver capabilities for optimizing lattice structures in designs for 3D printing in today’s Pick of the Week write-up. Make sure to check out the videos linked at the end. Good stuff.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Click here to read today’s Pick of the Week write-up.

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