& Construction

Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
& Manufacturing

Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Transcript
00:02
Explore generative outcomes. In this video, we'll explore generative outcomes.
00:10
In Fusion 360, we want to carry on with our Generative Design geometry setup. Make sure that we are in Explore.
00:16
If you've exited Explore during the solve,
00:19
you can always navigate back to it from your Generative Design workspace by selecting Explore Generative Results.
00:25
Once in the Explore workspace, there are several different areas that we want to make sure we understand,
00:31
and that way we can identify the best possible solution for our design.
00:36
In this case, we first want to talk about the toolbars at the top.
00:39
We have a couple different display options by default, It will be set to thumbnails,
00:44
but we can also include the Property's view which will give us additional information about each of the studies.
00:49
This will be things like whether or not it converged or completed the material,
00:54
The orientation if we're using something like Additive Manufacturing or Casting,
00:59
Whether or not we picked a specific manufacturing method,
01:02
and any of the other associated metadata that goes along with each of these studies.
01:07
Because we didn't include costing, we don't have any information for the costing of the part.
01:12
But you can see that we can identify the volume and mass of each part, the maximum stress and the safety factor limiting the target.
01:21
We also have other options such as using a Scatter Plot and because we're not looking at a large number of studies,
01:28
really what we're focusing our attention on is going to be the difference between the materials
01:32
and how those play out with the results that we're looking at.
01:36
We can change the different orientations and scales of this graph but what we really want to focus on are the icons.
01:43
When we look at the icons, there are three different things that we can notice.
01:47
We can see that we have thumbs up, and these thumbs up icons indicate that this iteration is one of the recommended outcomes.
01:55
We have ones that have a small beaker, and this tells us that this was using the Experimental Solver,
02:00
and then we have ones that are just simply a dot that's colored based on the material.
02:04
And these have no identifying characteristics such as whether or not it's a recommended outcome or if it was using the experimental solver.
02:13
And lastly, we have a table view which again it shows all of the information but it just simply displays it in a different manner.
02:21
You can see here that some of the studies failed, some completed and some converged.
02:27
So let's go back to our thumbnail view, and let's talk about our outcome filters,
02:31
and then we'll get into what it means to have a completed or a converged study.
02:36
On the left hand side, we have our filters.
02:38
These are things like Processing Status where we can take a look at just the converged solutions,
02:44
just the completed solutions, the failed ones or we can hide ones that we’re not interested in.
02:50
We can also take a look at different studies. If we were solving multiple studies, in this case we only have one.
02:56
But if we were solving multiple studies, we could view or hide those as needed.
03:01
We also have visual similarities.
03:03
Now Fusion 360 automatically goes through the process of grouping these together based on their visual similarity.
03:10
So this can be helpful if you're trying to make a decision based on the aesthetics of the design.
03:15
We have a section for Tech Preview.
03:18
If something's in Tech Preview, it'll have the small beaker or flask icon in the upper right hand corner,
03:24
noting that an experimental solver was used.
03:27
It could also indicate that a specific manufacturing method that is in preview
03:31
or even a criteria or a specific objective that is in preview could have been used.
03:37
We also have things like the Manufacturing method, the Materials and even Objective ranges where we can filter by various things such as the volume.
03:47
When we reduce the volume slider, you can see any that are outside of that range are automatically excluded.
03:53
So this can be a great way to filter through a large number of studies,
03:57
but in our case, we really focused on a handful of similar materials with the exception of steel,
04:03
and we looked at one single manufacturing method unrestricted.
04:07
And the reason we did that is because our design is going to be the basis for a more conventional manufacturing method.
04:14
So using the Generative Design solve allowed us to identify and understand what ideal geometry looks like and then we can plan around that.
04:23
Now that we understand the basics of navigating through Explore, Let's talk about the differences between converged and completed.
04:32
To do this, I'm going to take the four recommended solutions, and I'm going to select Compare which will bring them all four into this display.
04:40
This Outcome view that's showing us all the different solutions will allow us to synchronize them to rotate them around,
04:46
and even use the View cube if we wish.
04:48
We can identify some differences in each of these.
04:52
When we select one of them, for example, the upper left one is highlighted.
04:56
We can see the Material, the Manufacturing method, and some of the various properties.
05:01
We can see the status of this one is converged, we move over to Study1.
05:06
In this case, Outcome 1, this is the basic aluminum material, and you can see the status is completed.
05:13
Now the difference between completed and converged in this case,
05:17
means that the converged was able to narrow down on the factor of safety that we identified in our Design Objective.
05:25
In this case, we opted to maximize the stiffness of the design which meant we needed a mass target, and we also needed a factor of safety limit.
05:35
The mass target was around half a kilogram, you can see that these are quite a bit higher, this is at 15.
05:43
If we go over to this one here, it's at 10. So it's not converging around the mass but it's really identifying the factor of safety.
05:51
The factor of safety limit on this other design is 2.02. So slightly above where we set our limit.
05:57
That's okay because it's not that drastically different, and it's actually better that it's above the two rather than below.
06:04
But because it wasn't able to narrow down on that, it is not a converged result.
06:10
If we move over to Outcome 5, you can see this one is also completed,
06:15
and you can see this one has completed which is a final version and not converged.
06:20
But even though it was able to get close to that factor of safety,
06:24
there are other characteristics that allowed it to be completed rather than converged.
06:30
And then we have Outcome 9, this one is also converge, and this is the Aluminum 7075.
06:36
You can see that we have the factor of safety at 2, we have the mass at 17 kg, and we can see the displacement in this one is 0.98 millimeters.
06:45
We can see the steel one is a much lower displacement, and the basic aluminum one is also a fairly low displacement.
06:52
And then you can see that Outcome 17 Study 1 which was Aluminum A356.
06:57
This one has 0.47 millimeters for its displacement.
07:02
So as we're looking at these designs, we need to make a decision which one we want to go forward,
07:08
and that can oftentimes be an extremely complicated task because we are using these as the basis for a new design.
07:17
And by that, I mean we want to just take the geometry that we have here.
07:20
We want to replicate it in a way that's easier for us to manufacture.
07:25
We want to take the design elements of all three of these and see if we can incorporate them in some sort of more traditional manufacturing method.
07:32
And while that is not the single workflow that we have with Generative Design, it is one of the workflows or possibilities.
07:40
Because of that, I'm going to take a look at all three of these, and I want to look at the similarities.
07:45
All three of them have roughly three of these tubes on the back side for support,
07:51
even though they s slightly different geometry in each of them, but they all have very similar geometry going into that area.
07:58
So all three of them are pretty close there. As we get to the middle section of the frame, they all have this large triangle.
08:05
So this large triangle coincides with the position where the frame starts to bend back in towards the steering stem.
08:11
As we look at this one in the upper right, you can see that it has more of an open section here,
08:17
while this option in the upper left, in the bottom right, this is a little bit more closed in.
08:22
So as I'm looking at these, even though the upper right one is not converged,
08:26
I think I want to take a look at that one a little closer to see if this is going to be a good option for us.
08:32
Because of that, I'm going to use the X in the upper right hand corner of the other studies,
08:37
and I want to make sure that I pick the correct one. So we can see here that Outcome 1 and Outcome 5 are very similar in nature.
08:46
There might be some other differences that are not immediately apparent but they are very similar.
08:52
They have this brace that goes across, they are connecting to the stem in similar ways,
08:57
and ultimately the geometry of the triangular or trust sections are very similar.
09:02
So the one that I would want to pick to continue to work with would be the one that has the cleanest geometry.
09:09
There are different ways in which we can get these as a 3D Design that we can continue to work with in Fusion.
09:14
One of those methods is to export it as a 3D design, and the other method is for us to export it as a 3D model.
09:23
Both options will work just fine in most cases, you'll be creating a 3D Design from the outcome rather than a mesh,
09:29
simply because it's easier to work within that matter.
09:32
But what I want to do is I want to rotate around, interrogate and inspect this design to make sure that I am happy with the results.
09:40
There are some areas where we will need to make sure that we make adjustments.
09:43
For example, this crease right here, if I change from the Design preview to the Mesh preview,
09:48
that crease is more apparent with the shadowing, and this is exactly where one of our obstacles was.
09:53
So you can see the obstacle stops there at a sharp corner, and the frame starts to generate around that corner.
09:60
What this means is when we go back to the Design, we're likely going to get a sharp corner
10:04
or crease there because those obstacles that we created, that geometry actually gets subtracted once the body has been created.
10:12
There are other areas that I'm going to have to work on, I want to connect to the stem a little bit higher,
10:17
but if we take a look at our Starting Shape, it started fairly low, and it really didn't venture too much higher than that.
10:23
So another change we could make is to change the Starting Shape too.
10:27
Actually taper up a little bit if we wanted to rerun this study.
10:31
But everything else looks pretty good. All the results are nice and smooth,
10:35
and if we want to, we can always explore earlier iterations by taking the thumb mark at the bottom right hand corner,
10:42
and just simply dragging it back to earlier iterations just to see what it looked like earlier in the design process.
10:48
We can see here there's a little bit more material and if we use our Stress view, we can see areas of low stress concentration pretty much everywhere.
10:56
We can see what the mass is, the maximum stress, and we can see the factor of safety and the displacement values,
11:02
and see how this change as the iterations progress.
11:06
In this case, the number 49 iteration looks pretty good.
11:11
So I'm going to go back to a model view back to the design preview, and I'm pretty happy with those results.
11:17
I'm going to put a star to add this to my favorites,
11:20
and adding it to my favorites means that when I go back and I take a look at all the different designs,
11:26
I can filter them out by looking just at my favorite designs.
11:31
Using those favorites can be a good way for us to quickly and easily explore the different options.
11:39
When we take a look at our filters, we also have some additional options for recommended settings,
11:44
and then we have a Settings option where we can toggle on and off some of the other outcome filters and properties.
11:51
For me though, however, I do like the fact that I have all four of these that are very similar,
11:56
and again, the one that I want to choose is that base aluminum which ends up being Outcome number 1,
12:01
and that's going to be the option I'm going to move forward with for all of the rest of the work on this frame.
12:07
If you have solved your own version of this frame and you want to continue on with a different one, that's perfectly fine.
12:13
All of the different outcomes in settings that we're going to use will be the same regardless of which option you choose.
12:20
But this is going to be the one that I move forward with.
12:23
At this point, there's nothing that we really need to save or change
12:27
But it is always a good idea to work and explore and understand all the different options that you have in terms of filtering,
12:34
and viewing all the different studies that we've generated and make sure that you do have your design saved before moving on.
Video transcript
00:02
Explore generative outcomes. In this video, we'll explore generative outcomes.
00:10
In Fusion 360, we want to carry on with our Generative Design geometry setup. Make sure that we are in Explore.
00:16
If you've exited Explore during the solve,
00:19
you can always navigate back to it from your Generative Design workspace by selecting Explore Generative Results.
00:25
Once in the Explore workspace, there are several different areas that we want to make sure we understand,
00:31
and that way we can identify the best possible solution for our design.
00:36
In this case, we first want to talk about the toolbars at the top.
00:39
We have a couple different display options by default, It will be set to thumbnails,
00:44
but we can also include the Property's view which will give us additional information about each of the studies.
00:49
This will be things like whether or not it converged or completed the material,
00:54
The orientation if we're using something like Additive Manufacturing or Casting,
00:59
Whether or not we picked a specific manufacturing method,
01:02
and any of the other associated metadata that goes along with each of these studies.
01:07
Because we didn't include costing, we don't have any information for the costing of the part.
01:12
But you can see that we can identify the volume and mass of each part, the maximum stress and the safety factor limiting the target.
01:21
We also have other options such as using a Scatter Plot and because we're not looking at a large number of studies,
01:28
really what we're focusing our attention on is going to be the difference between the materials
01:32
and how those play out with the results that we're looking at.
01:36
We can change the different orientations and scales of this graph but what we really want to focus on are the icons.
01:43
When we look at the icons, there are three different things that we can notice.
01:47
We can see that we have thumbs up, and these thumbs up icons indicate that this iteration is one of the recommended outcomes.
01:55
We have ones that have a small beaker, and this tells us that this was using the Experimental Solver,
02:00
and then we have ones that are just simply a dot that's colored based on the material.
02:04
And these have no identifying characteristics such as whether or not it's a recommended outcome or if it was using the experimental solver.
02:13
And lastly, we have a table view which again it shows all of the information but it just simply displays it in a different manner.
02:21
You can see here that some of the studies failed, some completed and some converged.
02:27
So let's go back to our thumbnail view, and let's talk about our outcome filters,
02:31
and then we'll get into what it means to have a completed or a converged study.
02:36
On the left hand side, we have our filters.
02:38
These are things like Processing Status where we can take a look at just the converged solutions,
02:44
just the completed solutions, the failed ones or we can hide ones that we’re not interested in.
02:50
We can also take a look at different studies. If we were solving multiple studies, in this case we only have one.
02:56
But if we were solving multiple studies, we could view or hide those as needed.
03:01
We also have visual similarities.
03:03
Now Fusion 360 automatically goes through the process of grouping these together based on their visual similarity.
03:10
So this can be helpful if you're trying to make a decision based on the aesthetics of the design.
03:15
We have a section for Tech Preview.
03:18
If something's in Tech Preview, it'll have the small beaker or flask icon in the upper right hand corner,
03:24
noting that an experimental solver was used.
03:27
It could also indicate that a specific manufacturing method that is in preview
03:31
or even a criteria or a specific objective that is in preview could have been used.
03:37
We also have things like the Manufacturing method, the Materials and even Objective ranges where we can filter by various things such as the volume.
03:47
When we reduce the volume slider, you can see any that are outside of that range are automatically excluded.
03:53
So this can be a great way to filter through a large number of studies,
03:57
but in our case, we really focused on a handful of similar materials with the exception of steel,
04:03
and we looked at one single manufacturing method unrestricted.
04:07
And the reason we did that is because our design is going to be the basis for a more conventional manufacturing method.
04:14
So using the Generative Design solve allowed us to identify and understand what ideal geometry looks like and then we can plan around that.
04:23
Now that we understand the basics of navigating through Explore, Let's talk about the differences between converged and completed.
04:32
To do this, I'm going to take the four recommended solutions, and I'm going to select Compare which will bring them all four into this display.
04:40
This Outcome view that's showing us all the different solutions will allow us to synchronize them to rotate them around,
04:46
and even use the View cube if we wish.
04:48
We can identify some differences in each of these.
04:52
When we select one of them, for example, the upper left one is highlighted.
04:56
We can see the Material, the Manufacturing method, and some of the various properties.
05:01
We can see the status of this one is converged, we move over to Study1.
05:06
In this case, Outcome 1, this is the basic aluminum material, and you can see the status is completed.
05:13
Now the difference between completed and converged in this case,
05:17
means that the converged was able to narrow down on the factor of safety that we identified in our Design Objective.
05:25
In this case, we opted to maximize the stiffness of the design which meant we needed a mass target, and we also needed a factor of safety limit.
05:35
The mass target was around half a kilogram, you can see that these are quite a bit higher, this is at 15.
05:43
If we go over to this one here, it's at 10. So it's not converging around the mass but it's really identifying the factor of safety.
05:51
The factor of safety limit on this other design is 2.02. So slightly above where we set our limit.
05:57
That's okay because it's not that drastically different, and it's actually better that it's above the two rather than below.
06:04
But because it wasn't able to narrow down on that, it is not a converged result.
06:10
If we move over to Outcome 5, you can see this one is also completed,
06:15
and you can see this one has completed which is a final version and not converged.
06:20
But even though it was able to get close to that factor of safety,
06:24
there are other characteristics that allowed it to be completed rather than converged.
06:30
And then we have Outcome 9, this one is also converge, and this is the Aluminum 7075.
06:36
You can see that we have the factor of safety at 2, we have the mass at 17 kg, and we can see the displacement in this one is 0.98 millimeters.
06:45
We can see the steel one is a much lower displacement, and the basic aluminum one is also a fairly low displacement.
06:52
And then you can see that Outcome 17 Study 1 which was Aluminum A356.
06:57
This one has 0.47 millimeters for its displacement.
07:02
So as we're looking at these designs, we need to make a decision which one we want to go forward,
07:08
and that can oftentimes be an extremely complicated task because we are using these as the basis for a new design.
07:17
And by that, I mean we want to just take the geometry that we have here.
07:20
We want to replicate it in a way that's easier for us to manufacture.
07:25
We want to take the design elements of all three of these and see if we can incorporate them in some sort of more traditional manufacturing method.
07:32
And while that is not the single workflow that we have with Generative Design, it is one of the workflows or possibilities.
07:40
Because of that, I'm going to take a look at all three of these, and I want to look at the similarities.
07:45
All three of them have roughly three of these tubes on the back side for support,
07:51
even though they s slightly different geometry in each of them, but they all have very similar geometry going into that area.
07:58
So all three of them are pretty close there. As we get to the middle section of the frame, they all have this large triangle.
08:05
So this large triangle coincides with the position where the frame starts to bend back in towards the steering stem.
08:11
As we look at this one in the upper right, you can see that it has more of an open section here,
08:17
while this option in the upper left, in the bottom right, this is a little bit more closed in.
08:22
So as I'm looking at these, even though the upper right one is not converged,
08:26
I think I want to take a look at that one a little closer to see if this is going to be a good option for us.
08:32
Because of that, I'm going to use the X in the upper right hand corner of the other studies,
08:37
and I want to make sure that I pick the correct one. So we can see here that Outcome 1 and Outcome 5 are very similar in nature.
08:46
There might be some other differences that are not immediately apparent but they are very similar.
08:52
They have this brace that goes across, they are connecting to the stem in similar ways,
08:57
and ultimately the geometry of the triangular or trust sections are very similar.
09:02
So the one that I would want to pick to continue to work with would be the one that has the cleanest geometry.
09:09
There are different ways in which we can get these as a 3D Design that we can continue to work with in Fusion.
09:14
One of those methods is to export it as a 3D design, and the other method is for us to export it as a 3D model.
09:23
Both options will work just fine in most cases, you'll be creating a 3D Design from the outcome rather than a mesh,
09:29
simply because it's easier to work within that matter.
09:32
But what I want to do is I want to rotate around, interrogate and inspect this design to make sure that I am happy with the results.
09:40
There are some areas where we will need to make sure that we make adjustments.
09:43
For example, this crease right here, if I change from the Design preview to the Mesh preview,
09:48
that crease is more apparent with the shadowing, and this is exactly where one of our obstacles was.
09:53
So you can see the obstacle stops there at a sharp corner, and the frame starts to generate around that corner.
09:60
What this means is when we go back to the Design, we're likely going to get a sharp corner
10:04
or crease there because those obstacles that we created, that geometry actually gets subtracted once the body has been created.
10:12
There are other areas that I'm going to have to work on, I want to connect to the stem a little bit higher,
10:17
but if we take a look at our Starting Shape, it started fairly low, and it really didn't venture too much higher than that.
10:23
So another change we could make is to change the Starting Shape too.
10:27
Actually taper up a little bit if we wanted to rerun this study.
10:31
But everything else looks pretty good. All the results are nice and smooth,
10:35
and if we want to, we can always explore earlier iterations by taking the thumb mark at the bottom right hand corner,
10:42
and just simply dragging it back to earlier iterations just to see what it looked like earlier in the design process.
10:48
We can see here there's a little bit more material and if we use our Stress view, we can see areas of low stress concentration pretty much everywhere.
10:56
We can see what the mass is, the maximum stress, and we can see the factor of safety and the displacement values,
11:02
and see how this change as the iterations progress.
11:06
In this case, the number 49 iteration looks pretty good.
11:11
So I'm going to go back to a model view back to the design preview, and I'm pretty happy with those results.
11:17
I'm going to put a star to add this to my favorites,
11:20
and adding it to my favorites means that when I go back and I take a look at all the different designs,
11:26
I can filter them out by looking just at my favorite designs.
11:31
Using those favorites can be a good way for us to quickly and easily explore the different options.
11:39
When we take a look at our filters, we also have some additional options for recommended settings,
11:44
and then we have a Settings option where we can toggle on and off some of the other outcome filters and properties.
11:51
For me though, however, I do like the fact that I have all four of these that are very similar,
11:56
and again, the one that I want to choose is that base aluminum which ends up being Outcome number 1,
12:01
and that's going to be the option I'm going to move forward with for all of the rest of the work on this frame.
12:07
If you have solved your own version of this frame and you want to continue on with a different one, that's perfectly fine.
12:13
All of the different outcomes in settings that we're going to use will be the same regardless of which option you choose.
12:20
But this is going to be the one that I move forward with.
12:23
At this point, there's nothing that we really need to save or change
12:27
But it is always a good idea to work and explore and understand all the different options that you have in terms of filtering,
12:34
and viewing all the different studies that we've generated and make sure that you do have your design saved before moving on.
Step-by-step guide
How to buy
Privacy | Do not sell or share my personal information | Cookie preferences | Report noncompliance | Terms of use | Legal | © 2025 Autodesk Inc. All rights reserved
Sign in to start learning
Sign in for unlimited free access to all learning content.Save your progress
Take assessments
Receive personalized recommendations
May we collect and use your data?
Learn more about the Third Party Services we use and our Privacy Statement.May we collect and use your data to tailor your experience?
Explore the benefits of a customized experience by managing your privacy settings for this site or visit our Privacy Statement to learn more about your options.