Hi,
I've been trying to get "generative design" to work but it keeps saying the design is complete after only two iterations. The studies are supposed to show me the lightest design possibilities but only show me a solid block with holes in it for the obstacle-geometry, which is the heaviest design possible and also the same for every material. Does anyone know why this keeps happening?
Kind regards,
Thomas
Hi @Anonymous !
This can happen for a variety of reasons; can you upload your Fusion file so we can take a look? (File -> Export, Type: Autiodesk Fusion 360 Archive Files)
Ben
Hi @Anonymous,
File -> Share -> Public link -> check the 'allow to be downloaded' -> share the link here.
Thanks!
That's an amazing model! I took a look, and I have a few ideas for ways to keep generative from stopping without any shape change. I am running some experiments now and I'll report back when they're done.
Hi @Anonymous,
OK, I dug into it, and it looks like your study is failing because some of the preserve bodies became disconnected from the design.
Looking at your setup, there are several load cases, but only a handful of the preserves are used in any of them as a constraint or applied load. Generative starts with a pretty big and blocky shape that includes all the preserves, and as time goes on it tries to remove material in areas that aren't important to carry the loads your part must withstand. In your case, that removing of material separated one of the preserve bodies that were far from the load path from the rest of the structure, which causes generative to stop and show the outcome as "Completed" in Explore.
The thought here is that every preserve region you supply is important to your design, and so generative is giving you the best design it knows how to that touches all of your preserves. Sometimes, that logic creates strange-looking results like the one you saw. We have a variety of plans to improve generative so you don't see this kind of thing, but none of them are ready for prime time just yet.
You can fix this in either of two ways. The first option is to make each of the preserves "important" to the design in some way by adding a load or constraint on it in one of the load cases. In all likelihood the bolt holes you included in your design experience some kind of load which you could estimate and input, or if you just want them to be part of the design, you could make up a load and include it. Note though that very small loads (compared to the largest loads in your setup) can still cause disconnections. It depends on the geometry at play, but a good rule of thumb is to have at least one load on each preserve that's greater than about 10% of the largest load in the assembly.
Option #2 is to remove the preserve bodies that don't play a role in the load cases you have defined. Removing the load cases means that the generated part probably won't connect to those bodies (and we're not asking it to); that may or may not work for your design intent.
When I de-select the preserve bodies that aren't part of the load cases, I get a reasonable-looking organic geometry out of the study:
Hope that helps!
Ben
I had the same issue, but none of my objects lacks on constrains or loads.
here is the link to the design
