Nowadays, the conventional way of designing something-from buildings to airplanes- is to have one or multiple designers come up with one or several design options, then pass them on to another group of people for evaluation and feasibility assessments. In essence, this workflow which is practiced almost in all engineering firms has some limitations.
First of all, after weeks if not months of work the designers may come up with only a handful of designs. This seems very natural due to the limitations of the human brain. Afterward, these designs need to be assessed from different perspectives in other departments to ensure they satisfy the required constraints. For example, a structure must b withstand the applied loads to it. It is very likely that this won’t be the case and the design will be returned to the design department. This back-and-forth process continues several times until a solution complying with all the requirements is finalized.
In project Dreamcatcher, we tried to change this inefficient process. Instead of having someone to come up with the design, they define the goals and the constraints that the final solution must satisfy, and it is the computer that iterates through this vast design space-exploiting AI and complex mathematical models- and generates the solution(s) considering all the necessary requirements. This concept is called “generative design“:
Ever since the successful execution of project Dreamcatcher, Generative design has found its way into many industries and has revolutionized their usual practices followed; and pushed its way from a research project to become an Autodesk’s product. If you need further information about this new concept, check here and feel free to reach out to me. Below are some other videos about Autodesk’s generative design (emerging from project Dreamcatcher)!