Altair Inspire Overview
Altair Inspire is a powerful and intuitive family of software products designed to facilitate simulation-driven design throughout the entire product development lifecycle, from concept to reality.
Key Purpose
Altair Inspire empowers users to create, evaluate, and optimize product designs with a focus on both performance and manufacturability. It is tailored to help designers, engineers, and architects explore, develop, and manufacture high-performance products in a single, integrated development environment.
Key Features and Functionality
Design and Modeling
- Inspire Studio, a component of the Inspire suite, offers a flexible and precise design environment. It includes a construction history tool and supports multiple modeling techniques such as polygonal, freeform, and PolyNURBS parametric modeling. This allows users to create and explore complex designs efficiently.
Simulation and Analysis
- The software includes robust simulation tools for structural analysis, finite element analysis, and motion analysis. Users can evaluate the dynamic response of products, optimize their performance, and simulate complex mechanisms. It automatically identifies contacts, joints, springs, and dampers, and allows the addition and tuning of motors and actuators interactively.
Topology Optimization
- Inspire has democratized topology optimization, enabling users to generate innovative, manufacturable, and structurally efficient shapes quickly. It integrates with the OptiStruct solver to perform topology optimization studies using motion parameters, ensuring designs are optimized for stress and displacement.
Manufacturing Process Optimization
- The software provides tools to evaluate product feasibility, optimize the manufacturing process, and run virtual try-outs for various traditional, subtractive, and additive manufacturing processes. This allows users to validate designs early in the manufacturing process and design more efficient products with specific manufacturing constraints.
Motion Analysis
- Altair Inspire Motion, integrated within the Inspire environment, simulates the dynamic behavior of mechanical systems. It supports the import of native CAD files, automatic identification of joints, creation of both rigid and flexible bodies, and the easy addition of motors and actuators. This module combines motion analysis with topology optimization to achieve more efficient designs.
Visualization and Rendering
- Inspire Studio includes a high-quality, physically-based global illumination renderer called Thea Render. This allows users to produce stunning product presentations in real-time, using biased photorealistic, unbiased, and GPU modes.
Collaboration and Efficiency
- The software is designed to be user-friendly, allowing both novice and expert users to work efficiently. It runs on both Mac OS X and Windows and operates under Altair’s flexible token-based licensing model. This setup enables designers to work creatively without the constraints of traditional CAID tools while ensuring robust digital models for product development.
Benefits
- Time Savings: Inspire automates many processes, such as joint identification and motion analysis setup, reducing the time and effort required for design and simulation.
- Increased Efficiency: By integrating multiple analysis and optimization tools, Inspire streamlines the design process, allowing for rapid design exploration and product creation.
- Improved Design Quality: The software’s advanced simulation and optimization capabilities help users create high-performance, structurally efficient, and manufacturable designs.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Inspire’s ability to validate designs early in the manufacturing process and optimize for specific manufacturing constraints can lead to significant cost savings and process automation improvements.
In summary, Altair Inspire is a comprehensive tool that combines powerful design, simulation, and optimization capabilities to support the entire product development lifecycle, making it an invaluable resource for designers, engineers, and architects.