What's New

Enhancements to Design Space Checks

You can now center the tree on failed design points, get more details about failed points, and disable model view updates while you check design points.

Design Space Checks now include several new options. You can center the tree on a failed point in the scatter plot or table view. The table view now indicates the feature that caused a design point to fail, and a tooltip provides details about the cause of failure. In addition, you can disable updates of the model view while running a check of all design points.

Benefits: You can focus review details about the cause of failed design points to decide whether to explore similar designs. Disabling the updates to the model view saves the computational resources normally used to render the model for each design point.

For more information, see About Design Space Checks

License Reduction for Geometry Studies

The credit or token use for design improvement studies that change only the geometry is updated.

As the study progresses, licenses are consumed at a reduced rate. This is similar to the license reduction model already applied for studies based on structural or fluid mechanics analysis cases.

Benefits: You now need fewer licenses to complete geometry-only studies, reducing the overall cost.

For more information, see License Reduction for Design Improvement Studies

Plastic Strain Response Variables, Objectives, and Constraints

You can now include plastic strain magnitude as a response variable for optimizations.

Once you create plastic strain magnitude response variables, you can also use them as optimization objectives or constraints.

Benefits: Including plastic strain magnitudes in your optimization increases the ability of your design to measure the plastic strains in the design and control them as part of the optimization process.

For more information, see About Plastic Strain Magnitude Response Variables

Combining Parametric and Nonparametric Studies

You can now use completed shape or topology studies as the reference for new parametric design improvement studies.

Design improvement studies can now use shape or topology studies as the reference. Previously, you could use only geometry and structural or fluids analysis cases as the reference to create a new study.

Benefits: You can combine parametric and nonparametric studies to analyze your products and improve your designs.

For more information, see About Design Improvement Studies

Mesh Uniformity Checks for Topology Optimization Design Improvement Studies

You can now check the mesh uniformity for a body in a design space to confirm that the size distribution for its elements is ideal for a topology optimization study.

The app assesses mesh uniformity by comparing the size of each element to the average element size in the mesh. If any elements are larger or smaller than the average by a specified amount, the mesh uniformity check flags them as poor or bad elements. If your mesh includes poor or bad elements by this criterion, you can use the Quality Report panel to locate and improve them.

The app also runs the mesh uniformity check when you run a validity check for the study. If the mesh includes too many non-uniform elements, the app adds a warning message in the Diagnostic Viewer.

Benefits: When you create a fine, uniform mesh before running the topology optimization, you can produce a better optimized shape.

For more information, see Creating a Design Space

Expanded Support for Solid Elements

You can now perform studies for models meshed with any solid element types.

Design improvement studies previously supported only tetrahedral elements. You can now use models meshed with any solid element, such as a hexahedron mesh.

Benefits: Design improvement studies now support the same full range of mesh types for solid models as regular analysis cases. This expands the capability to reference an existing analysis case for a study without changing the mesh.

For more information, see About Design Spaces

License Attenuation for Shape Optimization Studies

When you submit a shape optimization study for analysis using the unified licensing model, the app now reduces the number of credits or tokens required to run the design cycles as the study progresses.

Benefits: Shape optimization studies require fewer credits or tokens, reducing the overall cost.

For more information, see Running a Simulation