A Practical Guide for Generative Design in Product and Industrial Design

ALEX LOBOS: Hello. Welcome to Autodesk University. I am Alex Lobos. I am Graduate Director and Professor of Industrial Design at Rochester Institute of Technology. I am also a Research Fellow Emeritus at Autodesk. And I am very excited to be here with you today. I'm talking about Generative Design. I'm showing you a practical guide for generative design for industrial and product design.

So you know let me explain a little bit of what we are going to cover today. It's basically best practices for running Generative Design studies and all of these from the angle of industrial design. One thing that maybe many of you have noticed is that Generative Design, it's a very technical tool, very useful, and wonderful.

But many times some of the terminology or details can be a little bit tricky for someone who is trained as a designer or not necessarily an engineer. So that is the main reason of this class, to give you some very practical tips and some guidelines for how to best use the tool.

Some of the learning objectives that we have for this class, first one is to define best practices for setting up and running studies in Generative Design. Second is to really understand the power that obstacles and preserved geometry have in setting up these stories so that they align with your design intent as best as possible.

Third, we are going to talk a little bit about forces, constraints, and other technical details. And we are going to pay attention to the values that we need to input so that the outcomes of the study are as accurate as possible. And lastly, we will cover some interesting workflows for refining the geometry that comes out from the Generative Design study so that you can integrate it with the rest of your design workflow.

So let's start by talking a little bit about generative design, the tool that Autodesk offers. This is a workspace that exists within Fusion 360, so when you are working in this product, you have all of the wonderful workspaces. One of them is Generative Design, and that's where you run these studies, which is great because it connects to the designs that you are creating manually.

The way that it works is that you set parameters and goals for your design. So you are not actively creating geometry at this point. You are just saying how you would like that geometry to perform. The tool creates some stories and simulations, so it offers you a wide array of iterations that all meet the criteria that you set.

And then from there, you select the solution that you feel works best, and then you integrate it with your design. So let me show you a little bit of how this actually works in terms of using Fusion 360. Everything starts with creating a base design. And these, I feel that it's very useful for you to understand the proportions, the dimensions, the components that are going to go into the design that you want to develop.

These, a lot of this is information that you will field to Generative Design, but is not necessarily geometry that will be part of the final design. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. But again, the main point is for you to have a reference of where you want components to be.

So in this case, we're looking at a simple bracket that's attached, affixed to a wall. And then it's supporting a horizontal beam. Once you are done with your basic design, you enter the workspace of generative design. And in there, you start assigning some new geometry.

So in this case, you see that I have five rings. These rings match with the openings for bolts that will connect the bracket to the wall and also the section that holds the horizontal beam that I was mentioning. So I set this up as preserving the geometry. That means that whatever outcome generative design creates, it's going to include in its geometry near these green sections that I have.

At the same time, I'm also setting up some obstacle geometry so that I make sure that none of the stories and simulations that are created interfere with any of the other components that I have. So you see that in there, I have placeholders for the wall, for the balls, for the horizontal beam.

Along with that, I go back to the preserve geometry and I started adding forces. So these can be weight, magnitudes that will have an impact on the design, just to make sure that it performs at the level that I need it to be. So these are some values that you assign to as many components as needed. And those are going to be used to determine how much mass the Generative Design output is going to have.

You can also add a few extra details to make your design more accurate. For example, you can set different manufacturing constraints, whether you are using die casting or two axis milling, or if you want your solution to be unrestricted, and then that's going to give you the most dramatic form. But it might be fairly hard to fabricate. So it's all about what resources and what type of outcome you want.

Once you are done setting up all of the information and parameters for your design, then you run the story, and as the story starts creating iterations, you'll see them here placed in this grid. So this is a great way of looking at the different options that you start obtaining from the tool, and you can start thinking about which one looks more adequate for the design that you are designing.

You can always click on each of the outcomes, and then you will get extra information. One cool thing is that you can actually compare them to each other. So for example in here, you are looking at how they perform in terms of their structural integrity, or maybe you can compare how much material each of these outcomes is using.

So that helps you to make a more educated decision for picking a final design. So once you have identified that, then you can export it, either as a Fusion file or as a mesh. Personally I like to export it as a Fusion file because then I am able to edit it. And then you can always convert it to a mesh later. So I feel that the Fusion file is definitely a more useful output.

So in this case, for example, I obtained this output that I really like. I bring it back into Fusion as a separate file. So I can save it, then I can import it to use an existing design that I have. One of the cool things that I can do at this point too is that if I go to the timeline, so the horizontal bar at the bottom, I can click on the purple icon, and I can edit that form.

So if I right click there, hit on Edit, I will go to the display environment, where we I can actually manipulate in the design. We'll get into more details on that later. But this is where you can actually go back to Generative Design outcome and then fine tune it to your needs.

So in this case, you can see the before and after. The initial design that I had was very rectilinear, very bulky. And then the result that I got from the Generative Design study is a lot more dynamic. It uses a lot less material. And visually, it's very interesting and striking.

So now let's move on to talking about obstacles. So you saw me talking about how you use this geometry to limit where a Generative Design study can create forms. I feel that using obstacles, it's actually the key to giving guidance to Generative Design on how you expect an outcome to come up.

So one thing that is very clear is that innovative design creates solutions that are on unimaginable to us as humans. It does things in a very different way. And then it creates forms that will be very hard for us to envision or even to model. I feel that the key at this point is to think of Generative Design as a collaborator.

So think of any time that you are working with someone. If you give that person a lot of space, some good guidelines and goals for a project that you are working on, but you let them be as open and innovative as they can, then the collaboration is very exciting and very positive.

If you give too much direction, you start limiting your collaborator, and then whatever they can bring to the project won't be as meaningful. So it's the same thing in Generative Design. What I like to do is go is to go through an iterative process, where I give as few obstacles as possible to the design, then I see what it can do, and then from there, I start determining how much extra information or limits should I give new to the tool so that it can create new stories.

So let me show you what that means. In here, I'm thinking of a design that will have a single base at the bottom. And then as it grows to the top, it will be a branch out, basically a tree. So I'm thinking one base, multiple base-- at the bottom, multiple bases at the top. So those are the cylinders that you see in here. Those are the placeholders where I know that geometry needs to connect with other elements of my design, for example.

So I take these bodies and turn them into preserve geometry, because I need them to be part of a Generative Design outcome. And then the arrows that you see in here are loads that I'm assigning to each of the components to make sure that they can support enough weight. I will get into a little bit more detail on that later. But that is the basic information that Generative Design needs in this case.

So I'm going to run this first simulation without any restrictions. And this is what I get back. So it's actually a pretty cool shape. I kind of like it. It has a very interesting shape. If I start looking at it with more detail, for example, I realize that maybe the base is a little bit wider than what I was hoping, or maybe some of these horizontal sections at the top are too much. And I was hoping for something that was a little bit cleaner.

So now that I have a better idea of the direction that I need to give to Generative Design, that's when I can start introducing obstacles. So in this case, I create these new bodies. And you can see a section view, so that you have a better idea of how these shapes look in all three dimensions.

First of all, I'm assigning a bottom, a floor. That makes sure that no geometry goes under the base. Then in the center, I have the cylinder that has kind of a V shape in the interior. This helps me to determine how wide some of this geometry is going to grow.

And then I also have another new shape in the middle, just to define, again, a more open center. And I'm hoping that that's going to avoid some of those horizontal connectors that I saw earlier.

So once I do that and I run the study, this is what I get. And you can see the improvement of this. There's really more interesting shapes. I feel that this is getting closer to how I was envisioning this part of my design to be. One thing that I notice is that now generative design added some geometry over the cylinders.

This is not something that I was expecting. Now that I see it, I realize that I would rather keep all of these frames under the cylinders. So I go back and I add another component. So in this case, it's another box that's sitting at that angle. And that will prevent generative design from adding geometry at that point.

So I run the study again, and now you see what I get. So I feel that I'm getting closer and closer each time. One thing that I noticed is that now some of the horizontal bars are returning. They are a little bit more organic, so I'm happy about that. But I see that they are still there. I wonder if at this point, Generative Design is actually telling me that if I want this frame to support the forces that I am setting up, maybe these horizontal lines are necessary.

So that's something that it's also important for you to read the outcomes of your studies so that you can kind of understand where the limits of your design are. You can imagine that this process can continue over and over multiple times, until you get the design that you really, really want, or when you have a deadline and then you just have to turn in your final design.

So now that we have a better idea of how the work flow works and how we can use obstacles to our advantage, there's another important part that I want to cover, and that is using the correct values whenever you are determining loads or constraints.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the session, Generative Design feels very familiar to engineers, I will say mechanical engineers in particular. A lot of the terminology that it uses is terminology that is used in engineering all the time, like forces, magnitudes, measuring units in neutrons or inbound forces.

A lot of this terminology is not as common to other disciplines, for example, industrial design. And what I've noticed is that many times people are intimidated by this, and they don't know how to solve a design. Sometimes they just take their best guess, and they have really very interesting results, but they don't really have an idea whether that solution is going to perform the way that it needs to.

So I'm going to spend a little bit of time just giving a quick overview on how to imagine or calculate some forces. I'm not an expert in that area, so don't take this as an exact precise way of doing it. Think of it more of a quick way of getting some polls of where some of your forces need to be.

The key is this, a force is mass multiplied by acceleration. So imagine, for example, that I am designing a chair, and I want the chair to hold 250 pounds. That 250 pound value is not a force. It's mass. So in the case of someone sitting down, I need to multiply it by gravity, and that turns it into a force.

So you can see in the example and the numbers that I have in there, once I use the formula of force equals mass by acceleration, I have to convert those pounds to kilograms, and then I multiply them by gravity. What I get is a result of 1,117 newtons. So that is the value that I need to use, not the 250 pounds.

And again, I know that for some of you, this might sound very obvious. My guess is that for some of you, this is actually something new, and it actually gives you a good guideline of a ballpark where you need to have your forces. This is a quick list of some other new common new forces or situations that I notice that happen often whenever designers are creating new solutions with Generative Design.

So think of it just as a general guideline for whenever you need to define maybe a part of a design that needs to hold a certain weight, or imagine if you need to design a doorknob that needs to support someone opening it in a residential or commercial application, someone pedaling on a bicycle pedal, or even just an object just falling into the ground by accident.

So these values that you see, I hope that they give you a ballpark of where some of your numbers need to be. And then you can always check with a professional to see if you are in the right ballpark.

So let's go back to analyzing some of the geometry that Generative Design creates. And in this case, what I want to do is spend a few minutes showing you how to refine those outcomes. For example, this is a shape that is very common to obtain after a generative design study. And when you first look at it, you're excited. It looks cool. It looks very organic. It kind of looks like a monster with tentacles.

Once you get over that excitement, then you start realizing some details in the design. So for example in here, I realized that some of the components might be too close or even interfering with other parts of my design, or maybe there are some irregularities, some bumps in the geometry, that I don't really like, or even some of the sections are just not proportionate. They are too thick or too thin in relation to some other components that are around it.

So let me show you three workflows that address each of these issues. So the first example that I want to show has to do with removing and repositioning geometry. So in this case, you see that I have these great horizontal bars that, for whatever reason, I feel that they are sitting too high. So what I want to do is to bring them down so that there's more space in that area. So let's see how that can be done.

So the game plan is this, you see that I have, in that top section, I have three branches that are extending. What I want to do is to isolate those sections, those three branches, and delete them. And once I delete them, I can rebuild them with a lower angle. So let's do it. And the way that I do that is that I go to one of the ends, I select the faces all around, and then I hit the Delete key in my keyword, and that removes the faces.

So I'm repeating the same step for the other two branches. So that's a second branch, and now I will do the same thing for the third branch, so basically isolating this part in the center that I want to remove. Now I get to this connection point, and you see that in here the faces are a little bit more organic. So I'm actually going around just making sure that I'm selecting the right faces so that I have the right geometry left over in the design.

So I do that. And now I can remove the entire section again by hitting the Delete key. So that is the first part. What I want to do now is to connect those faces, and I do that by using the Bridge tool. Now one thing that happens with Bridge is that both ends that you want to connect, they need to have the same number of faces.

And when you use Bridge, you don't see that information. It doesn't tell you how many edges you have selected. A work around that I found that works well is that if I go to Edit form, I have my selection filter to edges, if I select that end section in here, I can actually see how many edges I have selected.

So if I do this for both ends, then I know how many I have on each section. And if I need to remove extra segments, then I can do that so that the number matches. So in this case, one side has 12. The other one has 13. I take one of the extra segments and just hit the Delete key.

Now I have the same number. I use Bridge to connect both ends, and I just rotate the model to make sure that everything is looking good, that I have the right number of faces, I'm going from up to down, and then I hit Go.

Many times when you are editing geometry, some of the sections are unfrozen. And that is OK. I wouldn't worry about that part. Most times everything is able to remodel just fine. In this case, what I'm doing is the new sections that I created don't have any holes. So I'm creating the holes. I'm selecting some faces in the middle and just deleting them. So that creates a hole.

And now again, if I use Bridge, then I can just connect them without much trouble. One thing that I do see here is that there is self-intersecting geometry. An easy way of fixing that is paying attention to those white arrows that you see. If the arrows are at about the same position and aiming at the same direction, then your bridge is going to connect very nicely and very cleanly. And you see that is the case here.

So this is one section, two sections. I'm going to the third section now. In this case, this segment is pointing out upwards. And my goal is right now to move this section to downwards. So I'm actually using edit form to rotate some of the edges so that I can give it a more natural curvature so that it aligns nicely with the new bridge that I want to create.

So this is basically sculpting with the shape, as you can see it there. So now I'm happy with that direction. And I will repeat the same steps, which are basically creating a hole at the right height by deleting some faces and now deleting some extra edges so that the number of new segments match.

So now I can use Bridge, and I will connect these segments. I have self-intersecting geometry again, so again, it's not a big deal. I just click on those endpoints to match the point where the arrows start and then make sure that they go in the same direction. So that is that.

The second example that I want to show you is about scaling sections. So for example, in this case, what you see is this gray area. It's a little bit wide. It doesn't look in proportion in relation to the rest of the frame. So what I want to do is to scale it down. This actually happens quite often. So let me show you how you can go about it.

So normally for something like this, you will use Edit Form. And traditionally, you will use new faces, and-- sorry. You will use faces, and then you will scale them. One tool that is actually very useful is Soft Modification, so when you use that, what you see is that for every face that I am selecting, there's a red region that will affect all of that whatever I'm doing, scaling, moving, but in a gradual way, so that it transitions into the rest of the geometry.

So what I'm doing in here is just selecting some faces throughout the section that I need to edit, so that I cover all the faces. And you see that I'm selecting, de-selecting, so that I get the exactly the region that I want. Once I do that, I use the center orbit first to scale in all three directions. Then I use the sides to stretch it sideways. And lastly, I just need to bring the section down a little bit, because now that it's smaller, it's sitting a little bit higher.

So now I do that, and everything looks great. And then the third example that I want to show is removing bumps or some extra geometry that you don't need. And sometimes the Generative Design outcomes that you get have some of these details in the geometry that you just want to clean up.

So the way that we do this is very straightforward. We select the section that we want to remove. So we select faces, isolate the bump, and then delete the bump, basically. So I'm going around, just selecting faces, making sure that I select the right ones, delete them, and now I will select the bump itself.

And now the tool that I am going to use is Fill Hole. I click on one edge of that hole, and then Fusion takes care of the rest. It's very, very straightforward. Let me show you another example that might have a few more details about this. So this is one of the other sections. I'm repeating the same process, selecting faces all around to make sure that I get the segment that I need to remove.

So I got that section. Now I remove the bumps. So I go to Fill Hole, and I fill the hole. Sometimes the geometry that you get is not perfect. So in this case, I'm trying another method or Fill Hole to see if it's any better. It actually isn't. So I let it go. I use it. But then in this case, I'm removing an extra edge that gives some relief to the face so that that crease that you saw actually goes away.

So the last section that I want to talk about is some other tips or ideas that you need to keep in mind whenever you want to put the generative design outcome into actual use. So in this case, thinking about fabrication, how you can fabricate any of these parts. So I have two examples. The first one is a laptop stand that I designed.

So again, I was interested in using Generative Design, creating an organic shape that will look very interesting for this application. So I run a study, and it came out like this. And at first, I was super excited, like, very unusual shape, very sculptural. I think is going to look great.

Then I started thinking, I need to 3D print this. I don't think this is going to print in the printer that I have. It's going to be too big of a model. And even if I do, this is going to be a lot of extra work with removing support material, et cetera, et cetera. So I realized that this was not practical for fabrication.

I went to the displays environment, and I created these shapes very quickly, just connecting faces just to get a mockup, an idea of another design. And I thought that something like this actually had potential. So it was breaking the object into two frames sitting on the sides. And then I thought, I can connect those frames with some wooden dowels, for example.

So I ran a study. I didn't create any design itself. I just had the dimensions of the proportions that I needed for the frame. So I created these rings just to have those placeholders. So I assigned the forces. They preserved geometry to them. One thing that I did, in this case, was to set up some obstacles, just to make sure that whatever shape will come out was sitting inside of that space.

And this is the result that I got. And I saw it, and I thought, yep. I didn't know what I had in mind, but this is what I had in mind. And I think that's a cool surprise about Generative Design, that sometimes you see this where you're like, yes, this is what I would have thought of if I was a machine capable enough of doing Generated Design simulations.

But a couple of things that I noticed about this design, again, thinking about fabrication, one was some of these sections were very thin, so if I'm 3D printing this, I don't think that those parts are going to be strong enough. The other part is that you see significant horizontal hanging sections, so that means that I only need to add support materials so that the layers of the printer print successfully. So that's extra work that I didn't want.

The way that I decided to approach this was to add some sections. So this is what you see now. You see that in this new middle section, there's additional geometry in there that I added. This is not necessary for the performance of the products supporting the weight of a laptop. But it's very useful. So that the sections are a little bit wider, so that they last longer, and also so that I can print this without any support material.

So I can just print it and then take it with me. There is no post processing of it. So this is how it came out. These are the pieces pretty much straight out of the printer, and then I just connected two wooden dowels, and now I have a cool looking laptop stand. Another example that I want to show you is this chair, this lounge chair that I designed.

What I was imagining was a capsule like seat with a ring base and then having a Generative Design structure that connects to everything. So this is how the simulation came out. And at first, again, I saw it. I thought this is very cool. I think that this can work.

But when I started thinking about the fabrication, the scale of this product, I realize that there is not a lot of shops that can handle a scale like this. If they do, it's going to be so expensive to produce. So I don't think that this is a practical approach. One of the things that I realized is that in here, I did everything out of one piece. So it's connecting all the points, six points at the top with the seat, six points at the bottom with the base.

So what I ended up doing was to divide this into multiple studies. Each of the study only touches three points. So what you see in here is that each of these parts, it's a lot more manageable. It's a lot smaller. I feel that if I tweak it. I might even get away with having a flat section that I can machine out if that's was the only new process that I have available.

But in general, what I like is that this is a lot more practical approach, but it still captures the essence of generative design. So this is the example, some renderings of how the chair would look like. I would be very excited to give this a try and see how it looks in real life.

But that's all the time that we have for today. I really hope that you found some of these ideas useful and inspiring, that now you see Generative Design as a less intimidating tool, and that you see the potential of using it as part of your design process. So thank you for joining this class. Enjoy the rest of Autodesk University, and see you later.