Thursday, January 24, 2019

OpenLSTO plus InverseCSG


I was recently excited to learn about the OpenLSTO and InverseCSG projects, and that got me thinking: can we automate topology optimization interpretation for a 3D part with open source tools?

Topology optimization results are usually a discrete set of density voxels (as from ToPy) or a triangulated mesh (as from OpenLSTO). There is an interpretation step often required to take this result and turn it into something that you can fabricate or incorporate into further design activities. In the case of OpenLSTO you are getting what your manufacturing chain needs (an stl file) if you are 3D printing.

Interpreting the results of a topology optimization can be a time consuming manual process for a designer. While the steps to interpret a 2D topology optimization result can already be automated with a complete open source tool-chain, 3D is harder. I demonstrated in this post how the 2D bitmap output of ToPy can be traced to generate dxf files that you can import and manipulate in a CAD program. On the other hand, here’s an example I did that demonstrates the more manual process for a 3D part.

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

InverseCSG recovers CAD from model


The MIT Computational Fabrication Group has a page up with the abstract and links to the paper and video. The InverseCSG folks took a program synthesis approach to enable them to generate CAD boolean operation "programs" from the 3D model "specification."

Friday, January 4, 2019

OpenLSTO: New Open Source Topology Optimization Code

Optimized 3D Cantilever from OpenLSTO Tutorial

I was excited to see this short mention of a new open source topology optimization code in the Aerospace America Year in Review.
In July, University of California, San Diego published open-source level set topology optimization software. This new software routinely runs 10 million element models by adapting and tailoring the level set method, making design for additive manufacturing immediately accessible.
New computing tools, international collaboration spell design progress

The software site for UC San Diego's Multiscale, Multiphysics optimization lab has the basic license information, and links to documentation and downloads. The source code is up on github as well.