Carbon Makes Design Engine™ Software Available to All
Carbon Design Engine allows product designers to generate advanced latticed parts quickly and easily from a solid part STL file and output STL files for printing on most common 3D printers. Previously, this software was available only to Carbon platform customers, but beginning in early 2022 software licenses will be available for individuals and teams to design, develop, and print advanced lattices on most common 3D printers. With broad accessibility to Carbon’s lattice-generating design software, design engineers and industrial designers can automate the process of creating conformal, multi-zone lattices, dramatically accelerating the product development process. Design Engine has been widely used by global brands to design high-performance, breakthrough products, including bike saddles, helmets, and sporting gloves.
Specialized Bicycles reimagined the bike saddle leveraging Carbon Design Engine. “We’ve invested heavily in research and innovation, with the goal of improving riders’ experience on the bike. Our collaboration using Carbon’s Design Engine software and 3D printing process enabled us to develop a saddle with different damping characteristics, something impossible with traditional foam, leading to superior comfort. We wanted to push the limits and our partnership with Carbon allowed us to do just that,” said Emma Boutcher, Saddles, Grips and Tapes Product Manager at Specialized.
Carbon’s idea-to-production platform enables creators to develop better products in less time. It is comprised of a wide range of materials, a suite of software to design products and define production processes, and high-speed 3D printers. Within Carbon’s software suite, Design Engine automates complex product design and development from prototyping to production. Innovative products designed with Design Engine have successfully moved from design to production in months and then been produced at scale.
“Creators are challenged with fragmented solutions and organizational silos that have caused friction, limitations on innovation, and delayed time to market. To successfully bring better products to market in less time, organizations need a platform that unifies product design, development, and manufacturing,” said Phil DeSimone, Chief Product and Business Development Officer at Carbon. “Carbon’s software suite, starting with Design Engine, aims to cover every step needed for companies to create products with superior performance while accelerating the time to market.”
Lattice structures require less material, while retaining tunable mechanical properties. As a result, latticed parts can provide performance advantages, including lightweighting, flexibility, improved cushioning and dampening, heat dissipation, and unique aesthetics. Because of Design Engine’s unique ability to run complex computations in the cloud, design engineers can experience extremely fast design cycles to rapidly refine lattice designs in minutes, and use most 3D printers to manufacture them immediately. As a result, this robust and powerful tool helps creators go from idea to functional lattice part in hours, rather than days.
Key features of Design Engine include:
- Multi-zone: The Pro tier of Design Engine introduces the ability to tune multiple zones at once, integrating different lattice types, cell sizes, or strut diameters to create different zones of performance within a single part, using the same material.
- Powerful zone transitions: The Pro tier of Design Engine uses patent-pending technology to seamlessly blend zones, producing attractive, functional lattices ready to use in real-world applications.
- No tedious tuning: Designing even simple lattices often requires tedious, manual work that is prone to errors that can significantly impact part performance. Design Engine resolves lattice features, both large and small, while robustly transitioning seamlessly between different zones inside the same part for tunable performance.
- Precise control: Lattices generated in Design Engine can be optimized for a wide array of performance characteristics, including part volume and tunable mechanical response.
- Compatibility: Design Engine offers compatibility with most common additive manufacturing techniques by outputting generated lattices as STLs.
“Carbon’s move to open its design software to all designers is a game-changer for the product development process. We’ve seen what innovative designs are possible with Design Engine, and heard real use cases of efficiency from idea-to-production,” said Tim Greene, a Research Director at IDC. ”Moreover, the ability to generate designs that are agnostic to many printer technologies will empower more teams to rapidly create functional latticed parts.”
