Metafold update aims to make Design for AM accessible to more engineers
November 9, 2023
Metafold, provider of a cloud- and API-based 3D engineering platform, has announced a new release with capabilities designed to drive greater adoption of Additive Manufacturing and lightweighting to replace traditional, slower manufacturing methods. New features include compression simulation, conformal mapping to automatically resolve lattice structures for a given shape, and major updates to the user interface and API to make the concept of Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) more accessible to both engineers designing products and software developers using 3D designs applications.
“Additive Manufacturing shouldn’t be so hard, yet the mind-boggling geometric complexities have prevented companies from adopting advanced 3D printing capabilities,” stated Dr Elissa Ross, co-founder and CEO of Metafold. “With our new release, we’re trying to help more companies see all the benefits of Additive Manufacturing by making our breakthrough geometry kernel accessible to more engineers and more software developers. They can create new shoes, explore biotech developments, or make heat exchange advancements and other innovations while leaving the mathematical intricacies to Metafold.”
Metafold’s one-click simulation for 3D-engineered parts performs mechanical compression to a high standard of accuracy in predictive performance. Simulation enables engineers to test, iterate, and finalise designs faster than waiting for test builds, and faster than breaking their workflow to simulate in another application.
Conformal mapping is now built-into Metafold to smoothly map lattice cells to a part boundary so engineers can focus on and preserve product design ideas, rather than complex geometry.
Major updates to the UI is intended to give designers a familiar and comfortable work environment. The improved API includes more samples, and is built on modern, universal web standards so more developers can access next-generation geometry processing capabilities, reducing their time to market for geometry-rich web-based applications.
Other new features include:
- Template workflow
- New import and export file format support
- Smoother management of designs and projects for teams
- Software architecture reboot to support faster release of new features in the future
Simulation is available for a limited time in an open beta at three simulations per month, in the free edition of the Metafold Platform. Simulation and conformal mapping will be available in the Professional edition in the future.
Metafold is now exhibiting at Formnext 2023 at Hall 12.1, A20.
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