COMMENT
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Print – ISSN 1753-0482
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Andrew Allcock, Editor
Convergence in view
Autodesk has for a few years been talking about the convergence of
design and manufacturing, which sees the two as a single
continuous effort. Within this, designers get tools to help them make
manufacturing choices, while also receiving real-time feedback from
others via cloud-based collaborative workflows.
Autodesk is rooted in the design world, but it became a
mainstream Machinery interest in 2014, when it acquired UK CAM software specialist
Delcam – now simply Autodesk but still at the same Birmingham location. For a while,
the subtractive machining world that ‘Delcam’ software mostly inhabits was not too
visible in Autodesk’s ‘Future of Making Things’ message. The company was very keen
to talk about generative design – a cloud-hosted number-crunching process now
available via Autodesk’s cloud-hosted Fusion 360 software family – that used only to
spit out organic-type structures best made via additive manufacturing (AM), a process
well able to cope with such unusual designs; not so subtractive machining.
But the metal parts manufacturing world will for many years remain a subtractivefocused
activity, not least because there is a massive investment in an installed base
of machine tools that isn’t going to be trashed any time soon. Stalemate? No.
Last year (Machinery, March 2018, p10 – http://flk.bz/2H7V), we reported
Autodesk’s unveiling of a capability for generative design to be constrained to produce
parts suited to subtractive machining – described as a “gamechanger” at the time. This
year’s London-hosted edition of Autodesk University in June had more news on this,
with two grand examples presented: generative design linked with multi-axis subtractive
machining for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and plate profiling for Claudius
Peters (both, p10). Said Sam Ramji, vice president, Forge (Autodesk’s cloud-based
developer tools activity) to the assembled audience: “Generative design is practical for
JPL and Claudius Peters, and we are committed to making it practical for each of you.”
A further ‘manufacturing constraint’ for generative design to be added for Fusion 360
users is die-casting, with 2.5-axis milling also promised. Additionally, powered by
aPriori, users can view manufacturing cost estimates for every design result in a
generative study. These tools are set for wider use, too: ‘entitlement’ access to Fusion
360 is being granted to subscribers of non-cloud-hosted software, including PowerMill.
AM is still a key element in Autodesk’s ‘Future of Making Things’ vision, but the
London event showed that even that has found a place within a subtractive machining
process chain. Generative design plus plastic AM have been used to create a fixture to
hold a part during machining.
Convergence and generative design are definitely taking on more meaningful shape
for those operating in the subtractive metal machining sphere. ■
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