Shape Generator Makes its Debut

摘要

It's a vision that Autodesk CTO Jeff Kowalski shared a year ago. Inside the Mandalay Bay hotel, speaking to the crowd at Autodesk University 2014, Kowalski said, "[It] starts with your goal. Then it explores all the possible permutations of the solution through successive generations, until the best one is found." That sums up what Autodesk calls "generative design." A variant of generative design can be seen in Autodesk Within, which automatically generates lattice structures that fit user-defined geometric volumes. Another variant appears in the latest update to Autodesk Inventor as Shape Generator, a topology optimization function embedded in Inventor's CAD modeling environment.