Generative Design solution without limitations
Additive Manufacturing
- FDM/FFF (considering anisotropic stiffness and strength)
- SLS/MJF/DMLS/SAF (considering isotropic stiffness and anisotropic strength)
- SLA/DLP (considering isotropic stiffness and strength)
- Multi-material Design
Traditional Manufacturing
- Die and Investment Casting
- Injection Molding
- CNC Milling (3 and 5 axis)
- Extrusion
Why CogniCAD?
- CogniCAD is a manufacturing software platform designed for industrial functionality that has integrated design through inspection for customers’ digital factory needs.
- Our software can fit into the manufacturing operation and adapt to single product functionality by offering generative design/optimization, additive manufacturing, and inspection as standalone products, or an integrated suite of products.
- CogniCAD addresses the siloed factory and bridges the gap between subtractive and additive manufacturing needs.
- The ability to adapt a unified user interface gives the operations team the ability to learn once and apply many disciplines of the operational needs to the tasks at hand.
- The digital factory is central in building our technology solutions which are agile and can quickly be adapted to many hardware vendors based on our parameter driven capability.
- Leveraging existing software already running in your factory is one of the foundational design considerations established in our software, this allows many participating application vendors to integrate with our API’s.
Handles the most challenging engineering problems
One-of-a-kind material agnostic (isotropic and anisotropic) Generative Design
Bio-mimicry meso-structural Generative Design offering
One-of-a-kind Generative Design for Various Manufacturing Constraints: Additive Manufacturing, Investment Casting, Die Casting, Injection Molding, CNC Milling (3 and 5 axis), Extrusion
CAD-ready output (B-rep). No human interruption or remodeling is needed
Unique design of Meta-Materials with customized properties
One click reliable supports structures
Scalable cloud-based platform
Unique design of passive cooling devices
Robust and reliable slicing
Benefits of CogniCad
The missing link in unlocking the true potential of Industry 4.0
Automotive
Car suspension designed in CogniCAD for Mini Cooper, 47% weight reduction
Aerospace
Manifold lightweighted designed in CogniCAD – 56% weight reduction. Extra high resolution, 60M elements
Motorcycles
ECOSSE motorcycle engine mount bracket designed in CogniCAD – 35% weight reduction
Medical
Femur bone – Meso-Structural designed in CogniCAD
| CogniCAD | Other Solutions | |
|---|---|---|
| Design Cycle | Hours | Weeks |
| Cost of Design Project | < Order of Magnitude | ~ $15,000 – $20,000 |
| Design Quality | Superior (weight vs. performance) 15-20% lighter than other optimized solutions Minimal Human Intervention |
Less Optimal Human Centric |
| Hardware Investment | Zero | ~ Cluster > $100,000 + maintenance |
| Material Agnostic | Isotropic, Anisotropic, multi-material | Isotropic |
| Manufacturing constraints | Additive Manufacturing Casting Injection molding Extrusion CNC Milling |
Require intensive human interruption |
Design with Confidence
CogniCAD is the only generative software product with a fully automated workflow based on in-house developed topology optimization, high resolution finite element analysis and computational geometry, that requires no manual adjustment or reconstruction.
Designs generated by CogniCAD satisfy all design requirements, CAD agnostic as B-rep (STEP) and are ready for manufacturing (STL) within tens of minutes up to few hours.
Increase your productivity
CogniCAD allows companies to scale. One engineer designed 5 functional parts ready for advanced manufacturing within 1.5 days
Design of Support Structures
CogniCAD offers fully automated 1-click design of support structures for SLA and DLP
Control parameters:
- Overhang Angle
- Typical lattice size and beam width
- Contact point thickness, penetration depths and z-compensation
- Output is STL ready for AM
- Slicing exported in .SLC, .CLI and .PNG formats
“We have tested different Generative Design tools in order to take advantage of all the design freedom that Additive Manufacturing allows you. To date, CogniCAD has provided the best results, obtaining lightened parts with improved mechanical properties.
In addition, CogniCAD has produced the most high-quality geometries which are almost directly 3D Printable, reducing the post-processing time and allowing us to satisfy all the boundary conditions. We are very pleased with this software and all the support we have received, and we are really looking forward to see all the new updates coming.” Sandra García ArcelorMittal Global R&D Engineer
Technology
CogniCAD is a fully autonomous and intuitive generative design, simulation and manufacturing cloud platform that optimizes the most labor-intensive steps in the digital work flow from design to manufacturing. We deliver the best-in-class lightweighting and performance enhancements with ready to manufacture designs in a short period of time without manual interruption or re-modeling.
Topology Optimization Available Via Cloud Platform CogniCAD
- • Variety of loading conditions
- Forces and moment (via remote points), pressure, acceleration (g-forces), thermal loads and vibrations (frequencies).
- • Handling isotropic and anisotropic material
- Optimizing material distribution for isotropic materials, exported as STL and STEP. Optimizing material distribution and orientation simultaneously for anisotropic, exported as g-code ready for manufacturing and STL/STEP.
- • Outputs
- STL and STEP (ready for CAD), validated by built-in proprietary Finite-Element Analysis. Zero manual re-modeling or geometry reconstruction.
- • Accurate feature-size control and manufacturability
- Accurate and robust features size control. Various manufacturing constraints – Additive Manufacturing, Die and Investment casting, CNC milling – 3 and 5 axis, extrusion and injection molding.
- • High fidelity designs and unprecedented resolution
(10-60 M elements and higher) - Allows for significant light-weighting and low volume structures.
- • Friendly and intuitive UI
- Intuitive workflow and user interface powered by public / private cloud.
Heat Conduction Topology Optimization
CogniCAD allows design of passive cooling devices and heat sinks
- Boundary conditions is temperature applied on faces of non-design regions
- Thermal loads are: heat flux applied of faces, volumetric heat applied on volume bodies (mimicking conduction and convection)
- Design for thermal compliance under volume fraction constraint
- Output is STL ready for AM
Multi-Material Topology Optimization
A one-of-a-kind offering
Advanced Additive Manufacturing expands into multi-material, hence there is a need for efficient multi-material design software tools. Apparently, there is a lack of multi-material design solutions on the market and this gap must be filled. CogniCAD does the job.
Multi-Material Generative Design technology developed in CogniCAD allows for significant reduction in weight and manufacturing cost.
What would we expect from such a generative design software? Ideally, such a tool should provide with optimal structures having most effective distribution of topology and material type simultaneously. This is a very challenging problem, because each candidate material has different material properties, like density, stiffness, strength etc. In optimal structures, a strong material should be located in places where stresses are high while a weak material can be located in moderate stressed areas. Stronger materials are usually heavier or more expensive, hence ideally a designer would be interested in the cheapest and/or lightest solution.
Meso-Structural Optimal Generative Design
CogniCAD Meso-Structural Design Technology is a one-of-a-kind offering for design of infill and fail-safe structures
Natural structures, which evolved millions or billions of years are optimal to carry set of applied loads. For us humans, it is not always clear what are the loading conditions, but we can have an educated guess. Looking closer into bone micro-structure we can clearly see that. Meso-Structural Design Technology is able to generate optimal porous structures which would mimic natural structural behavior.
What would such designs look like in 3D?
First, switching from 2D to 3D is computationally challenging. We expect to have very detailed designs, which are reflected into high-resolution Finite-Element models. Thanks to the unique technology in CogniCAD, large-scale Topology Optimization problems can be solved. Typically, 10-60 Million 3D-elements (30-180 Million Degrees of Freedom) can be easily and effectively solved using CogniCAG solvers. This resolution is not a limit, hundreds of millions of elements resolution can be achieved.
In order to demonstrate 3D optimal porous design in meso-structural level, we will consider femur bone case under two loading cases.
This is clear that meso-structural designs are redundant to localized failure, means if there is a given member failure an alternate load path occurs. This approach is ideal for secondary-load path or fail-safe design philosophy which applied in critical aerospace applications.
Is such a complex design manufacturable?
The design is available as mesh (STL, PLY) and can be Additively Manufactured in spite of the tremendous complexity. Volumetric representation is also possible.
The optimal porosity changes due to the applied loading direction. This design approach is much more optimal and viable than replicating periodic lattice unit cell.
