3DEXPERIENCE CATIA Lattice Designer Exploration, Oct. ‘23
This is a concatenation of two posts I made on my LinkedIn about the 3DEXPERIENCE CATIA Lattice Designer role (LTX). This role is intended to take a part and actually model in lattice structures like infill or lightweighting zones.
There are a number of premade structures which do not 100% correlate to “common” infill patterns, but are designed with the following goals:
The latticed output must be able to be used in simulation software
There must be parametric control over the lattice pattern
The model must be computationally usable (i.e. ever loaded a big STL file into CAD? It doesn’t behave well; this can’t happen with the latticed structures here).
So with those in mind, let’s take a look at my original posts:
I’ve been using the #CATIA Lattice Designer (LTX) tool for a little over a day now, mostly with imported parts, and it is very impressive.
I’m a #CAM guy, so a situation where hacks or final geometry is decided in CAM rather than CAD is all too familiar. #AdditiveManufacturing is in an even more complex situation. Lightweight infill patterns are computationally expensive to represent, your usual slicer preview is a backplot.
With Lattice Designer, though, your part as-designed is the part you come out of your additive process with (on powder and watertight processes). This enables us to simulate the final product and reduce time to market as additive manufactured final-use products become more and more common.
Keep an eye out for more information and if this sounds like it’s up your alley, contact me or the whole gang at GoEngineer for a demo!
Note: These latticed structures were made using imported STEP files from McMaster Carr and another CAD system. At time of writing, SOLIDWORKS parts can be imported and latticed, but existing parts within a tenant cannot be. This will hopefully be updated in the near future. Until then, there is an import-export two step.
Alright, the 3DEXPERIENCE CATIA Lattice Designer (LTX) role is really growing on me. I'm slowly developing CATIA-brain, in that how the software expects me to interact with it is steadily becoming less mysterious.
After getting the hang of the workflow, I'm also just flabbergasted that my computer works at all after having one of these loaded not just into LTX, but back into #SOLIDWORKS as well.
I'm extremely interested in how this will impact processes that require lots of surface area. Heat exchangers, filters, etc. For the time being, enjoy these test coupons designed for the Stratasys Origin One.
