Bridging Nature-Art-Engineering with Generative Design

Abstract

Since their evolution, human beings designed things by observing and learning from nature. Still, there’s a lot to learn from nature when designing advanced components, with the prevalence of materials development and engineering design at the forefront of additive manufacturing. Hence, innovative product design is an increasingly demanding task as more and more technology, science, and art are integrated into the product. Collaboration between designers and engineers increases as more participants get involved in the development process. Winning the race to the market means shorter deadlines. Overwhelmed by the multitude of responsibilities, engineers hardly have time to find a feasible design. Even less to improve it. Designers find an appealing use of novel software tools (organic design, organic form, organic structure) that even more complicates the entire design cycle. Unfortunately, most designers lack the knowledge to address specific functional and technical requirements, resulting in beautiful though impractical designs. Such a gap creates difficulties in later product development. The application of generative design could provide some optimism in this respect. Using topological optimization, morphogenesis, and biomimicry, or/and other algorithms found in nature, enables generating several alternative designs. Consequently, more alternatives are considered than previously possible.

This paper aims to present some design issues, accelerate product development, and shorten the time to market. The review covers the limitations of today’s engineers and their effects on design quality. Research on generative design presents some technical considerations and details of use, as well as how to apply such algorithms to design form, structure, or/and function.