There has been a lot of buzz around 3D printing lately.  Actually, I got involved in this industry in the early days when it was called rapid prototyping and stereolithography was the only technique.  It is great to see the development of this industry and the wide variety of materials now available.

Altair’s OptiStruct technology and 3D printing are becoming great partners.  OptiStruct’s topology optimization creates the most efficient structure for the given loads as recently described in a Forbes article.  It produces organic-like structures that can sometimes be difficult to manufacture.  3D Printing gives us the opportunity to directly print any structure we can imagine so we can now truly manufacture the most optimal design.

At our recent Altair Technology Conference in Turin, Italy, we brought together industry leaders and experts in the use of 3D printing technology to discuss this technology and where it is going.  It was a great session and shows how 3D printing and topology optimization can revolutionize the way we design and build in the future.  You can read more about this session and review the presentations here. 

Recently, the team and I spoke with Digital Manufacturing Report to discuss the ways manufacturers’ growing reliance on CAE is challenging the industry to continue to evolve its software offerings. Driving factors like innovations in HPC and cloud technology are paving the way for technology advancements that enable manufacturers to solve more complex problems and deliver better usability across the enterprise. We discussed how the recent release of HyperWorks 12.0 addresses this evolution in “Altair Takes HyperWorks to the Cloud.”

Here’s an excerpt: Read More

As noted in the 2012: Simulation’s Year of Discovery post that I wrote last December, the impact of simulation continues to reveal itself, enhancing everyday products and our daily lives. From innovations in speed and crash modeling to light-weighting vehicle, aircraft and consumer packaging designs, industries are continuing to discover new ways to use simulation technology as we move through a new year. But what does that mean for simulation in 2013? How is the definition of “everyday” being shaped by technology? Read More

In 2012, a growing number of industries discovered new ways to use simulation to improve their designs, safety, performance and sustainability. While the automotive sector continued to increase its reliance on simulation to make vehicles lighter and more fuel-efficient, engineers and designers found ways that simulation could save weight, costs and lives in everything from cruise ships to airliners.

We touched on these emerging trends throughout the year, and here are the top five trend-related posts that I believe demonstrate the future of simulation in our products and our lives: Read More

My colleague, Jon Quigley, Director, Multi-Disciplinary Simulation at Altair, submitted the following blog post.

The area of multiphysics has reached an inflection point in the CAE market.  Customers are increasingly requesting solutions that span traditional single physics, and vendors are responding by providing multiphysics -capabilities.  These typically come in two forms:  sequential and co-simulation.  Sequential involves a solver for a single physics producing results that can be manipulated in preparation for a second solver run of a different physics.  An example could be using an FEA code to prepare a modal representation of a structure for further use by a CFD or MBD solver.  Co-simulation applies when two or more solvers are performing a time-forward simulation and exchanging data along the way.  One example is fluid-structure interaction (FSI), in which an FEA code solves the structural portion and a CFD code solves the fluid portion while they exchange data to properly capture the effects that each domain has on the other.    Read More