[OPEN] Looking for feedback on the Volumetric Lattice tool

[daniel.bartlettAXQLT]

Hi everyone, we’re excited to announce the release of the Volumetric Lattice tool into Public Preview as part of the Product Design Extension. Once you have the preview feature enabled, you will be able to find the Volumetric Lattice tool under the Modify tab in the Design Workspace.

The tool extends the Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) capabilities inside of Fusion 360, giving you the ability to create complex lattice structures quickly and efficiently. The tool has three cell types to choose from, you can vary scale and position within the part, vary the solidity and add offset regions. Whether you are designing optimised components that need to be stiff but lightweight, or a part that needs to be able to absorb impact, this tool could be the solution for you.

If this tool interests you, please give it a try and share your feedback here. We are looking for feedback on three main areas:

• How do you find the user experience? How easy is the tool to understand and what areas are unclear to you?
• How stable is the tool? Have you found any bugs or crashes?
• What features would you like to see in this tool? What would be useful in your lattice design process?

We already have some know issues which are already being resolved and they are logged below:

• Bodies with Volumetric information only appear in the design workspace
• Creating an offset region using the face of a primitive shape results in an incorrect internal structure
• Crash when using a Point as an Offset object
• Text in the Volumetric Lattice tool is not localised
• Solidity value gets reset when using the Edit Volumetric Lattice command

The team is looking forward to hearing your feedback. Thank you very much and we hope you enjoy!

[wmhazzard]

It looks cool but how is it different than what a slicer already does?

[rushabhthakkar_910]

Is the Issue of Product Design Extension Solved..?

Issue described in THIS POST.

[daniel.bartlettAXQLT]

Hi, great question! So you can think of infill structures for FFF as a type of lattice structure and when you slice a part, we create the lattice infill structure in the toolpath. However this is quite unique to the FFF process, when you slice a part for SLA or almost every other additive process you would need to design your own lattice infill structures. Which is one application for this tool.

That being said, there are a range of other applications for Lattice structures. For example, if using a flexible material such as TPU, a lattice structure could be used to absorb impacts, and you could use spatially varying solidity to change the stiffness throughout the part. 

Hope this helps!

[daniel.bartlettAXQLT]

Hi, this is a known issue and the team is working to resolve it as soon as possible. I don't know when the issue will be resolved, but it should be very soon! 

[rushabhthakkar_910]

No issues. Thanks for the Reply. 

[bharat.borate.27]

I have the same question!

[laughingcreek]

@daniel.bartlettAXQLT - I was just now able to access this functionality.  here are some of my initial thoughts.

-seems odd that it doesn't put a feature in the timeline, but instead you have to right click the body to find options.  I'm sure there is an excellent reason for this programming wise, but is inconsistent with how the rest of fusion (mostly) works.

-are we ever going to be able to design our own cell geometries?  that would make this a far more interesting tool.

-creating a mesh is a one time deal.  if you make any edits you have to delete your first try and re-create.  clunky.  seems like it should respect the timeline.

[daniel.bartlettAXQLT]

Hi @laughingcreek , thank you for the feedback. These are some great points and I'll be sure to share them with the team.

- As for the timeline query, this is something that we discussed long and hard. We made the decision not to include the lattice command in the timeline and instead treat it as if it were a material or appearance. The thinking was that, as we we're applying a lattice structure to the volume of a body and not changing the surface geometry, we could treat the lattice as a property of the part, as opposed to a feature on the part. In the same way you can apply a material property to the part, you can also apply a lattice structure property to your part. I really appreciate this feedback though and I will definitely share your concerns with the team.

- User-designed cell structures is definitely an area of interest for us! Its such a powerful feature of a latticing tool and its a feature that really highlights the benefits of including solid modelling and volumetric modelling in a single product. I can't give a specific date, but its certainly on our roadmap.

- This is a really valuable point and I think a side effect of the decision to treat lattice structures as a property of the body. I will share this issue to the team

Thank you for experimenting with the tool and sharing your feedback, we really appreciate it and helps us create better tools.

[TrippyLighting]

---

@daniel.bartlettAXQLT wrote:

Hi everyone, we’re excited...

If this tool interests you, please give it a try and share your feedback here.

---

I was excited (with an emphasis on past tense), however, important implementation details were not shared, which would have certainly dampened that excitement.

It looks lime a voxel based technology, which, however, does not interact with any of the other modeling tools in Fusion 360. For example, I cannot create a sheet metal body, unfold it, apply a volumetric lattice and re-fold it.

It cannot be rendered either. 

I agree with @laughingcreek that the UI choices seem quite out of line with other tools in Fusion 360.

As such it looks like a cool tech demo that has utility only in a very specific area of Fusion 360. 

[jean-michel_legoff]

Hello,

I'm using Volumetric Lattice in a project, and have had to use it in another component using the derive feature.

I was able to select and import the body in my new component, but the Volumetric lattice information don't come with it. And so I have had to note all the parameters from the original one to apply on the second one. and they are not "linked"...
Is it by design? could it be possible to share this information in Derive Feature?

Many Thanks

@Sualp.Ozel @harv.saund 

[jean-michel_legoff]

I've tried to print some volumetric Lattice with my FDM 3D Printer, but I didn't find any way except by converting it in mesh in the "design Environment".

Could it be possible to keep the editable lattice in Design  and apply the converion only in Manufacture as an edition in editing in the manufactured model?

in another hand it's a pity that the Mesh model is not linked to the Latticed body, so if you edit the LAttice, the Mesh is automatically re-generated...

Many Thanks

[AlexLeeang]

Hi!

I’ve tried this new feature today and I found it really useful and exciting. Especially, the preview is really fast.

However, when it comes to output, I found it pretty slow when I try to convert it to mesh, and with huge mount of faces, I can’t keep too much details on the mesh, whereas I can easily do this when I use the save as mesh command to a body.

I’ve tried on 2 computers, converting a mere 7-liter-large bounding boxed body into mesh at a mere 1mm accuracy — which is 8M elements — and my M1 Mac mini spent 7 mins, while another PC with i9 9900K spent 3 mins. 

And seems that I need some an hour to do so if I double the refinement accuracy. 

I wonder if there’s any plan to improve the performance or the accessibility of this feature?

[laughingcreek]

@daniel.bartlettAXQLT - as noted by others (post 12 in this thread for instance), you have to re-generate the mesh manually every time the tool body is modified.  is there any plan to change this behavior?

[nicolas_beaudoinPK47B]

Hi. I think the volumetric lattice tool would be greatly improved if it added radial lattices.