Reduction of Fixation Points vs. Keep all Non-Design Spaces

MSC Apex Generative Design allows the user to create different result structures depending on the defined parameters such as Strut Density, Shape Quality and Complexity. Furthermore, the design can be changed by taking advantage of the capability to reduce unnecessary Non-Design Spaces and fixation points. This gives the optimisation more freedom and will create completely new designs. In some cases it even makes sense to consider part consolidation as another goal of the optimisation.

The software automatically figures out how many Non-Design Spaces - mainly for fixation points - can be reduced and how many need to stay. Naturally, Non-Design Spaces without any loads or fixations applied are reduced first by the stress-based optimisation algorithm. No stresses occur in these and the surrounding area and therefore no material is needed. Of course there is a chance that these areas are being retained if they are exactly in the stress flow of the rest of the structure.

For this reduction to be possible and take place, the definition of constraints needs to be applied as follows:

As you can see in the image, all Non-Design Spaces which are fixations need to be collected in one constraint. You can also include several in more than one constraint - then one fixation will always be retained by the algorithm. The function Keep Non-Design Spaces needs to deactivated for the Non-Design Spaces as well as the constraints to allow such a reduction. For Non-Design Spaces without any boundary conditions this selection is enough. Per default the function Keep Non-Design Spaces is always activated.

To make sure all the Non-Design Spaces and fixation points are included in the result, the function Keep Non-Design Spaces can be activated.

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Generative Design - GD-Bracket