Research Report: Simulation-Driven Design for Manufacturing (SDfM) Experiences
Product engineers are under consistent pressure to reduce the costs, improve the quality and increase the throughput of manufacturing processes. This fast-paced environment is not well suited for trial-and-error manufacturing engineering.
How are engineers responding to these challenges? Is simulation and simulation-driven design for manufacturing (SDfM) well established across the industry? When simulation is deployed, does it deliver on the promises of reducing costs while improving throughput and quality? And what are the barriers to the adoption of simulation during the early stages of product development?
In this 2021 survey report conducted by Engineering.com, we discuss those questions and discover:
• Top design priorities
• Top benefits of SDfM
• Top barriers to expanding and adopting SDfM
• Risks to staying competitive in the market
Technical Document
Altair Inspire Print3D - Support Optimization
Design for additive manufacturing with overhang shape controls to help reduce overhangs to create more self-supporting structures.
Use Cases
Part Orientation in Inspire Print3D
Altair Inspire Print3D offers an intuitive, process-driven user experience enables users to gain deep manufacturing insights quickly, driving faster and better design decisions. Whether they start from an Inspire assembly or a CAD import, users can quickly place the part on the chosen printer bed and find the optimal part orientation to minimize supports.
Product Overview Videos
Support Optimization in Inspire Print3D
Altair Inspire Print3D offers an intuitive, process-driven user experience enables users to gain deep manufacturing insights quickly, driving faster and better design decisions. It allows to easily generate support structures as part of the design process, interactively creating and editing supports within the same environment as the designed part.
Product Overview Videos
Results Visualization in Inspire Print3D
Altair Inspire Print3D offers an intuitive, process-driven user experience enables users to gain deep manufacturing insights quickly, driving faster and better design decisions. Leveraging the embedded thermo-mechanical solver, users can easily detect and visualize defects – large deformation, excessive heating, delamination – to aid design or process modification.
Product Overview Videos
Mass Optimization of a 3D Printed, Small Series Prototype e-Drive Housing at Porsche
In his presentation, Sebastian Wachter of Porsche takes us through an exciting project where topology optimisation technologies were combined with 3D printing to create a highly innovative engine-gearbox housing that is 10% lighter than the existing component and twice as stiff.
Conference Presentations
Altair Inspire Optimization Workflow
This series of videos shows users how to use Altair Inspire from start to finish. Examples include defining the design space, analyzing dynamic motion, conducting topology optimization studies, designing for additive manufacturing, verifying designs, and configuring assemblies.
How-to
Optimize Manufacturability with Altair Inspire Print3D
Design for additive manufacturing with overhang shape controls to help reduce overhangs to create more self-supporting structures.
How-to
Sustainable Design-to-Part Workflow for Additive Manufacturing of Lightweight Components Using Amphyon & Altair Inspire™
Advancements in 3D printing and design optimization for additive manufacturing (AM) is changing the industry’s overall approach to product design. This webinar features Altair Inspire™ a solution for designing parts through additive manufacturing and Amphyon, a complementary partner tool available through the Altair Partner Alliance. Through a combined workflow we’ll demonstrate an alternate and more efficient approach towards generative design. Instead of manufacturing the part, a process simulation in Amphyon is conducted to predict the impact of the AM process to the design. This feedback is then used to optimize design further and improve the manufacturing process by essentially fixing the defects early in the design process.
Webinars
Medical Device Design and Optimization Leveraging Additive Manufacturing
Technology for designing optimized parts for additive manufacturing, from initial design through simulation of the 3-D printing process will be showcased. An extended example using a customized hip-implant will be used to highlight the various technologies used throughout the process. A brief overview of capabilities will be provided at the beginning, and a summary of benefits will conclude the discussion.
Webinars
Developing a 3D Printed Solid-Lattice Hip Prosthesis
Total hip replacement surgeries are seeing an increase in demand, but between 10-20% of these patients may require a revision surgery because of a failure or wearing out of the prosthesis. When an implant causes a change in the typical stresses on the surrounding bone, a phenomenon called stress shielding occurs. Stress shielding increases the risk of bone resorption, bone fracture, and revision surgeries.
Topology optimization helps medical product designers develop implants that better match the stiffness of healthy bone and improve the comfort and longevity of the prosthesis. In this study, Altair uses simulation to design an optimized solid-lattice hip implant that reduced stress shielding by more than 50%.
Use Cases
Altair Inspire - Unit Cell Lattice Generation
Altair Inspire includes the ability to generate lightweight, unit cell lattice structures for 3D printing. Unit cells can easily be edited, evaluating the structural performance of different design variants in moments.
Use Cases
Altair for Manufacturing Applications
Altair offers a unique set of simulation tools to evaluate product feasibility, optimize the manufacturing process, and run virtual try-outs for many traditional, subtractive, and additive manufacturing processes.e
Brochures
Inspire Print 3D - Efficient Design For Additive Manufacturing
Efficient Design For Additive Manufacturing Using Altair Inspire Print 3D
Webinars
Simulation-Driven Design for Additive Manufacturing
This webinar will take you through the concept and roadmap phase, all the way to the manufacturing process - all within Altair Inspire and Inspire Print 3D, a revolutionary generative design and 3D printing simulation environment that solves real world production challenges. Learn how to rapidly visualize production defects, rectify problems to avoid downstream production issues, save product weight, reduce material consumption and cost all through the use of intelligent complementary design technologies.
Webinars
Inspire Print3D Product Overview
Altair Inspire Print3D is an additive manufacturing (AM) product development and process simulation solution that enables teams to enhance part quality and minimize lead time and AM costs by reducing material usage, print time and post-processing. It enables Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM), providing a fast and accurate toolset for the design and process simulation of selective laser melting (SLM) parts.
Product Overview Videos
Altair Inspire Print3D Datasheet
Altair Inspire Print3D is an additive manufacturing (AM) product development and process simulation solution that enables teams to enhance part quality and minimize lead time and AM costs by reducing material usage, print time and post-processing. It provides a fast and accurate toolset for the design and process simulation of selective laser melting (SLM) parts.
Brochures
Ideate, Design and Manufacture a 3D-printed Pen
A short workflow video illustrating the journey of a design idea, from the initial sketches to additive manufacturing, utilizing Altair Inspire Studio and Print3D. The final metal 3D-printing of the pen has been done in collaboration with SLM Solutions.
Conference Presentations
Inspire Print3D - Getting Started
A course to help users get started using Inspire Print3D including an interface tour and workflow training/videos.
Quick Start
Enhance Device Design and Reduce Clinical Trials Through Simulation
This biomedical webinar series highlights solutions for some of the healthcare industry's most complex challenges. Each session covers applications specific to the medical field including how to leverage multiphysics to enhance medical device design, using machine learning to optimize medical stents, improving mechatronics performance with model-based development software, leveraging additive manufacturing for the design of implants, and using optical modeling for biomedical systems and applications.
Webinars
Start-up Success with Simulation
Startup company amprove employs a series of cutting-edge simulation techniques to develop high-performance parts tailored towards a variety of manufacturing methods including, but not limited to, additive manufacturing and casting. As a result, amprove generates optimized parts, which enable them to meet the performance and economic needs of customers. In order to reach their goals, amprove needed an optimization solver they could rely on to provide accurate results. Having used Altair OptiStruct™ previously, they decided to reach out to Altair to pursue a potential partnership. During this process, the Altair team was pivotal in helping them join the Altair start-up program. Through the use of manufacturing simulation software such as Altair Inspire Cast and Altair Inspire Print 3D, amprove has been able to provide more polished solutions for their customers. Utilizing OptiStruct provided the opportunity to attain ideal designs with significant weight reductions, leading to a lower cost for amprove’s customers.
Customer Stories