New competitive products have to meet growing and challenging demands of the ever changing market. They have to be designed to be light-weight, durable, robust and resource efficient. At the same time, products have to be delivered to market meeting ever shortening design and launch schedules. Introducing optimization within the simulation process helps to meet these goals. Variation analyses and performance improvements can be identified on the digital prototype very early on in the design cycle. This also allows the overall number of physical prototypes to be reduced leading to significant savings both in time and cost.

Femap Topology Optimization is based on the best-in-class optimization technology from TOSCA Structure, by FE DESIGN GmbH, accessed within the Femap modeling environment to help meet enhanced structural optimization objectives. The NX Nastran finite element model is used which significantly reduces the time to set up the optimization task. All design changes are performed during an iterative optimization loop, and are validated automatically by NX Nastran. The integration of the optimizer within finite element simulation is seamless, and allows easy and efficient consideration of structural topology optimization early in the design phase.

The first layout for a component is a very important step in the design phase. The further into the design process, the more difficult it is to make changes to the design. Femap Topology Optimization delivers new design ideas while simultaneously considering other important design requirements including the overall structural performance and manufacturing constraints. By optimizing the design significant savings can be made in material usage compared to conventional designs.

The results from Femap Topology Optimization are automatically smoothed, and can be transferred and imported back into the CAD system. Femap Topology Optimization supports the complete optimization workflow, from the first design concept to optimized geometry for return back to the designer.