Generative design - Solve locally?

[Anonymous]

Is it possible to solve locally?  Appears to be only possible to solve the cloud.

Just looking to experiment and learn to use the GD tool at this point.  I suppose this might take a ton of credits if I need to cloud solve for 25 credits each time.

[jodom4]

Hi corry.daus,

At this time local solves are not an option. Let me know if you've got any other questions, I can pass you along to people on the appropriate team if you'd like.

[mvassilevJSN2W]

It seems like like getting 4 tries to learn generative design is not enough, and being forced to pay per study might force people to not use the software that they are already paying for. I think having the option to also solve studies locally makes the most sense. I know many people that jumped on the new subscription for Fusion 360 including myself because of the Generative Design. Is there a reason to not have the option to solve locally?

[mavigogun]

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@mvassilevJSN2W wrote:

I think having the option to also solve studies locally makes the most sense. I know many people that jumped on the new subscription for Fusion 360 including myself because of the Generative Design. Is there a reason to not have the option to solve locally?

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A natural wish, and question I have asked.   The answer is today what we want is a practical impossibility- the intensive crunching power necessary to perform the operation is farmed out to a powerful array of servers over at Amazon.    It's amazing, really, that we have access to that much computing power.    The calculation would take our personal machines many, many days to perform- and would require the script to be rebuilt to accommodate our sloth technology.

[mvassilevJSN2W]

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@mavigogun wrote:

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 It's amazing, really, that we have access to that much computing power.    The calculation would take our personal machines many, many days to perform

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I'm sure a lot of compute is necessary, I can see that.

I'm realizing the issue that I and many are having is that Fusion 360 is still being marketed towards the hobbyists and enthusiasts and small markets where it's not quite there yet to compete with the main cad programs, but is getting better and better each year hence the reasonably priced subscription ($310/yr). And Generative Design was pushed very aggressively and was one of the main selling points for you guys which was great, but most people will not be able to justify using it due to the prohibitive cost. Most will not even be able to learn how to use it in the first place due to the 100 starting credits. That aspect of Fusion 360 is currently priced for aerospace for example where someone can sit down and optimize a particular bracket where time and money is not an issue in order to say reduce mass by 50%. The example of someone redesigning their skateboarding trucks like in the videos you guys have is a great dream, but ultimately unrealistic one. It's as though there are 2 products rolled into Fusion, but the user base will only use one aspect. I can see how a large company would buy a license for Fusion strictly for Generative Design if they ever need it and not use any of it's other capability because they are already grandfathered in some other cad program.

[Anonymous]

Thank you. I was about to purchase the subscription just for Generative Design but as you all have mentioned it is not worth the deal.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, this is a disappointment. 

I understand the computational power limitations; however, there are still ways autodesk can minimize this issue. 

The idea of being able to use generative design is amazing but not if you have to spend so much money to learn how to use it.

Autodesk, could you release a number of 'trial' files to help illustrate the process of starting and completing a generative design so that users can see exactly what inputs and information is necessary so that we can get back a successful generative design instead of paying for ones that come out nothing like we expect since this is such a new and little understood area? 

Make these files 'easy' objects so that they do not use up much computational power and then have those still run through the autodesk credit system but only require like a few credits and not 25!!

[henderh]

Hi @Anonymous 
We do offer Generative Design Samples that are great examples of how to setup GD studies & their respective outcomes.  Check out the Generative Design Samples project in the Data Panel.

Also, we provide the Previewer command in the GD workspace that allows you to view the first ten or so iterations of the outcome shape for your study, free of charge.
Hope this helps!
Best regards,

[petri.k]

I am very disappointed as well, very much.

I am using Autodesk Product Design & Manufacturing collection and I only get 100 credits for Fusion 360 to do tests with generative design and learn this feature.

I also did those tutorials which are available but I had to stop it when I would have needed to generate designs. I couldn't see outcomes and study them more closely. What a waste of time!

Also heard that beginning of the year that Autodesk gave unlimited credits for some period of time, of course I noticed that too late.

https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/fusion-360-free-generative-design-until-2020/

I have always thought that Autodesk give much value for users but with this, that's not the case.

[Anonymous]

Is it  still like that !!!
Man, that's not cool I've just bought a full year of Fusion just for this feature....
It's already way to expansif for a hobbyist like me, now I'll have to pay more to learn?
I will ask for a refund and go with Solidworks that have a local solver that don't take a vast array of amazon computer!😠

[TrippyLighting]

So Solid Works offers local Generative Design?

And you have checked prices ?

[I_Megaman_i]

I totally agree, GD is somewhat locked behind a huge paywall for those who want to learn it. Also making almost every **** feature cloud based is what scares people off of F360 imho. You are not the only ones that have a lot of computational powere out there you know)

[TrippyLighting]

I think that the rather large number of Fusion 360 users would not agree with that statement 😉 That is being scared off by the cloud features.

[I_Megaman_i]

Every engineer I know are using SW, Rhino or something else...I dont mind cloud-based features as long as they are optional and not forced on you...like cloud-based exporting of obj, fbx....do you really prefer this over offline exporting?

[TrippyLighting]

I am an Engineer 😉

[I_Megaman_i]

I dont know you😁

[TrippyLighting]

LOL. I would also appreciate having those exporters run locally. Having to wait minutes or longer for an email with a download link I find pretty disruptive to my workflow as well.

Generative design, however is a completely different story. One of the Expert Elites studied this subject tin depth and wrote a very good post that I cannot find at the moment. But the essence of the story was that running GD locally is pretty much useless as it requires large computational resources.

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@TrippyLighting wrote:

So Solid Works offers local Generative Design?

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AFAIK, the SolidWorks version is Topology Optimization/Shape Generator, not true Generative Design.
I think @I_Forge_KC posted a good white paper here in the past - but I am on my way out the door and don't have time to search it out right now.

[I_Forge_KC]

Everyone misses the big picture here.

At its core, Autodesk Gen Design is a topology optimization system. Full stop. What makes it wildly different isn't that it's cloud based, leveraging clusters, or anything else the marketing team said. The difference is in the parallel nature of the system. I can solve for different materials, loads, seed conditions, resolutions, manufacturing methods, physics optimizations, and more - all at the exact same time. To do the same with a desktop solution means running each one of those variable changes as an individual study. What takes 24hrs on Fusion would take weeks, months, maybe years on a desktop platform. The solver is the same (kinda)... But running tons of them at the same time is the game changer.

If you're after a single study to craft a single solution... Gen Design isn't the tool for you.

If you're trying to explore possibility and see where potential lies across a bunch of variables... Gen Design is exactly the tool for you.

[TrippyLighting]

@I_Forge_KC thanks for chiming in. It was your post I could not find 😉 (shame on me)