Additive manufacturing greatly expands the possibilities for product design, allowing for topology optimized parts, lattice structures, meshing and geometric patterns. Printing these designs in 3D is only half the battle, however. Defining their organic complexity up front is an equally daunting challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apart from topology optimization, the designs that involve repeated geometric patterns across complex surfaces or within volumes are particularly difficult and time consuming to define. Some product engineering teams have resorted to writing their own code to generate the patterns they need. However, this approach is time consuming, requires expert programmers, and can\u2019t be reused without extensive code maintenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In December 2020, Siemens Digital Industries Software introduced a new feature in NX that makes this sort of design work much easier. It\u2019s called \u201calgorithmic modeling,\u201d and it provides designers a drag-and-drop, no-code capability for creating reuseable geometric patterned elements. Leveraging within the NX environment, algorithmic modeling lets users define the intent and rules for their design by connecting together inputs and outputs in a highly intuitive visual logic workflow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n