CogniCAD 4.0 Preps Parts for Both 3D Printing and Traditional Manufacturing

ParaMatters, the California-based provider of the CogniCAD generative design and multi-material topology optimizing cloud solution, has announced the release of a software upgrade, CogniCAD 4.0.

Image courtesy of Paramatters

The new upgrade caters to both additive and traditional manufacturers, and includes faster, more robust solvers for design constraints, including vibrational considerations, an advanced structural support generator, and improved features such as hollowing, slicing, orientation, and latticing capabilities to enable improved material saving and efficiency in 3D printing parts.

“With ParaMatters 4.0, both digital and traditional manufacturers can take advantage of this powerful agnostic CAD-to-CAD generative design and lightweighting software,” said ParaMatters Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Dr. Michael Bogomolny. “Traditional manufacturers now have access to a one-of-a-kind technology that enables them to create lightweighted and structurally validated parts to meet their design and manufacturing needs. Designers and engineers can automatically generate high-performance designs that consider various manufacturing technologies and make decisions based on a cost, performance and time-to-market basis.”

The software solution automates the development of production-ready generative design and optimized topologies, with built-in finite element analysis, and provides a cloud or Windows desktop-based CAD-agnostic solution for engineers and designers across key industries. The new upgrade now means the software serves  a broad range of additive manufacturing, and traditional manufacturing methods, including 3-axis, 5-axis CNC-milling, investment and die casting.

What’s more, all designs generated by the CogniCAD platform are directly usable for additive systems and transferrable to traditional manufacturing processes, allowing for easy and flexible integration into existing manufacturing and supply chains. Notably, the software accepts all inputs from a broader and more varied potential user base for industrial production, and can then generate ready-for-production STL or STEP designs, in minutes or hours as opposed to weeks and months. The platform’s services are offered as a pay-per-design or on-going subscription service and are cloud and desktop accessible now.

In 2019, the company launched CogniCAD 3.0 at Formnext, with advanced topology optimization features and metal AM simulation capabilities. Now with CogniCAD 4.0, the upgrade has improved on 3.0 and expanded its capabilities to include other manufacturing methods besides AM. The software platform is known for its proprietary functions including its unique mesostructural generative design feature that mimics natural structures to create optimal porous structures and load-optimized designs.

The company, with Co-founder and Board Member Avi Reichental, is backed by venture-firm XponentialWorks. In 2018, soon after the software platform was launched at CES 2018, CTO and Co-Founder Michael Bogomolny outlined the effectiveness of one its features in a Linkedin article – showing how its multi-material topology optimization feature could be used to create a significantly lighter, topology optimized titanium-aluminum composed part compared to an aluminum-only part. Such autonomous and user-friendly features with automated CAD-to-production-ready files provides powerful, cloud-based solutions to engineers and designers particularly in automotive, aerospace, motor vehicle and medical industries.

Earlier this year, another generative design solution provider Additive Flow, introduced its additive awareness feature, with AM-specific intelligence in part design. In July this year, MSC Software, a subsidiary of Hexagon known for their AM simulation software, released a generative design tool that can be used on laptops to create production-ready optimized designs for 3D printing. And indicating the fast-growing potential in additively-intelligent design software in digital manufacturing workflows, nTopology closed a round of funding, led by New York-based Insight Partners, raising its total to $40 million in funding to date. This further points towards the acceleration being made in AM-specific software over the last three years, as observed by SmarTech in its look into the additive manufacturing software landscape 2020.