This book is a very light-weight introduction into the exciting world of the โSimulation
Driven Design Processโ. It is meant to give pupils, undergraduate students and maybe
even designers new to Computer Aided Engineering CAE a โtasteโ, a first idea on how
simulation, especially conceptual design (simulation) works.
The tool of choice used in this book is Altair Inspireยฎ. Inspire enables design engineers,
product designers, and architects unfamiliar with numeric simulation, to make
optimal use of the material by placing it only where needed to meet structural
requirements. With INSPIRE, you will be able to:
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Create, modify, and de-feature solid models
Generate design concepts that are not only structurally efficient but also
manufacturable by choosing your manufacturing process,
Customize your material,
Choose your optimization options: loads, displacement and stress constraints,
objectives (e.g. maximize stiffness or minimize mass),
Surface smoothing of the optimized concept geometry
Analyze the performance of concepts generated by the software using finite
element calculations.
Depending on your experience you may feel lost by reading the explanation what
Inspire is. Donโtโ worry, weโll explain you all these terms in this book.
Please note that a commercially released software is a living โthingโ and so at every
release (major or point release) new methods, new functions are added along with
improvement to existing methods. This document is written using Inspire 2018,
except some of the videos referenced which come from a variety of sources (and are
partly based on earlier versions of Inspire). As such, there may be some differences
between what you see in the videos and the latest version of Inspire. However, we
believe that these differences will not distract you from using this guide as an effective
learning tool.