We had a chat with Novineer, a new company offering 3D generative design software.
The Daytona-based company is quite new, having been founded in 2022 by Dr. Ali Tamijani and Dr. Zhicao Wang. Tamijani had previously been a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
They began development of their product in 2023, and first released beta versions to friendly customers in 2024.
What exactly does their product do? It’s all about topology optimization, the process of reducing the design to only the essential elements required to perform its function. Traditionally, this has been done by high-power software that churns out optimized designs.
The problem is that those generated designs have two problems. First, they are usually made from complex and highly detailed surfaces that are effectively not editable. Second, these designs are often not truly manufacturable, requiring some edits — but that’s hard to do because of the first issue. The result is that designers tend to use the optimizations generated by traditional software as guides, rather than the final part design.
A third problem, if I am allowed to add one, is that traditional software tends to require massive amounts of compute power to complete the job. This takes resources and, more importantly, time.
Novineer changes this by using a discrete polygon geometry. This allows them to generate actually editable CAD models that could potentially become the final part design. This short-circuits the workflow and makes the process much faster. In addition, their processing requirements are lower than traditional optimizing software, and results are obtained faster.
Using Novineer is straightforward, as you choose options for strength, stiffness, location of mechanical loads, etc. You can generate both an editable CAD model, or a non-editable STL file, or both.
Novineer is hosted on AWS servers and operates as a cloud service. The service is offered as an annual subscription, with tiers based on the number of core hours consumed. We were told a typical subscription scenario might be 2000 core hours a year, representing around ten projects, could cost US$3000 per year.
Novineer seems to have quite a different optimization product than most other offerings. If you’re looking for an optimization solution for your complex part designs, you might want to check out Novineer.
Via Novineer
