Lighter and Stronger with Lattice Designer on 3DEXPERIENCE

In our world of advanced manufacturing, the demand for lighter, stronger, and more sustainable components is higher than ever before. What if the key to stronger, lighter, and more efficient products lies not in solid volumes of the structure, but in the hollow spaces? This is where lattice design offers an innovative option for lightweight yet strong structures.

What is a Lattice?

A lattice is a regular, repeating arrangement of interconnected elements or struts. Lattice structures consist of complex repeating geometric patterns that result in a lightweight yet structurally strong component. Components with lattice structures are commonly seen in aerospace, biomedical devices, prosthetics, additive manufacturing, automotive, and similar industries where strength-to-weight ratio and material durability are very important to a product‘s performance.

Example lattice structures

As these structures cannot be manufactured with traditional methods, they are often created using 3D printing or other additive manufacturing methods. There are some difficulties involved in generating such lattice designs. Smooth handling and visualization of lattice structure with a large number of replicated patterns, generating watertight, clean models optimized for additive manufacturing, and the seamless integration of the process into downstream domains are a few challenges with building lattice structures.

How Lattice Designer on 3DEXPERIENCE Helps

The Lattice Designer role available on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform offers a scalable solution to help mitigate these challenges. It can facilitate the concept through the detailed design of previously unachievable complex  lattice structures

3D printing a lattice design

The Lattice Designer app guides the user in the design workflow, including the definition of the regions to infill with lattices to create conceptual and detailed lattice geometries. The created lattice geometry can easily and directly be used with 3D printing applications.

It is built on a robust CATIA geometric modeler and allows users to:

• Create regular and irregular lattice patterns made of 3D Beams.
• Design with Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces (TPMS) for advanced applications.
• Seamlessly integrated with other domains, including SIMULIA for structural validation, DELMIA for manufacturing Preparation, and CATIA visual scripting. The models generated from Lattice designer can be used in Fluid Dynamics engineer (FMK) for CFD, such as heat transfer analysis.
• Export directly to 3D printer-ready formats like STL, AMF, and 3MF.

How Do You Make Lattice Structures?

The workflow consists of a few major steps: Geometry Creation, Cavity Definition, Conceptual Lattice Design, and Detailed Design. The initial geometry can be a solid volume or an ordered geometric set. Before assigning cavities, the lattice area or volume inside the part must be defined. For this, the Lattice Designer role offers a set of commands to use in the Lattice Design Exploration options. For beginners, there is also a Lattice Designer Assistant that walks through the design process step by step.

The Lattice Design Assistant

Creating Cavities

Once solid geometry is available, the lattice designer apps can be used to initiate lattice modeling. The Cavity Volumes command is used to compute the volume to be filled by lattice structures. Cavity volumes provide an option to create a cavity by a few different methods, such as filling shells, sewing elements, or cutting elements. Once the cavities are defined, the next step is to use Lattice Concept Manager to assign a lattice design to the pre-defined cavities of the original body.

Creating the lattice cavities

Building the Conceptual Lattice

Lattice types can be rectangular, circular, conformal, or even custom-defined. The Motif types can be Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces (TPMS) or Bars. The Bars type gives a constant step size in all three directions. TPMS lattices can be created using different cell types, such as Diamond, Fisher Koch, and Gyroid. These lattices can be customized, enabling the fine-tuning of performance and manufacturability.

Defining different conceptual lattices

In the image below, the first cavity is infilled using bars and crown cells to generate a lattice in a rectangular pattern. The second and third cavities in this example are filled with rectangular and circular lattice patterns. Once the conceptual lattice design is complete, the concept Information option can be used to determine the material saving information.

An example of a conceptual lattice

Generating the Detailed Lattice

The next step in the process is to generate the detailed lattice design. This gives control options such as smoothing and decimation sag to control the intensity of blending that is applied to transitions between latticed and solid volumes, as well as the connection between lattice networks. A section view of the detailed lattice structure is shown below.

A finalized, detailed lattice design

Going Beyond Lattice Design

The latticed geometry can be used in any other design or engineering app, as it has been created as real geometry. A typical use case is to pass it to the SIMULIA apps to create a structural model and run design simulations. The results from these simulations can be used to evaluate the strength and performance of the design and highlight any areas that need improvement.

Structural simulation results from SIMULIA

The Lattice Designer role on 3DEXPERIENCE is more than just a basic tool. It enables the design of complex, lightweight, and manufacturable lattice structures, thereby empowering designers to advance the frontiers of product design innovation.

Ready to see how Lattice Designer can fit into your existing workflow? Contact us here for a free consultation.