With the goal of bringing AM to mainstream production, software companies have as much work to do as other technology providers of the industry. For companies like nTop – previously known as nTopology -, one of the main objectives is to enable a smooth transition between the design, integration, scaling, and adoption phases of each AM user. With these axes in mind, the company announces several upgrades to its flagship product: nTop 4.
At the design level
nTop 4 introduces Field Optimization, a new generative design technology that helps engineers navigate the numerous manual iterations that become time-consuming during the manufacturing process. Field Optimization layers a multi-scale and multi-objective optimization engine on top of nTop’s core technology through its “easy-to-use” workflows. While nTop will continue developing the capabilities of this solution in future releases, it assures that AM part designs for applications like lightweighting, medical implants, and industrial design could already benefit from this solution.
At the Integration level
For this stage, nTop has developed Implicit Interop, a solution that addresses the complexity in legacy design file sizes that become a roadblock. Implicit Interop eliminates data exchange bottlenecks by enabling data transfer between nTop, manufacturing, CAD, and CAE software in files sizing in the megabytes, not gigabytes.
This integration is supported by:
- nTop Core — A developer library that makes it easy for partners to implement native Implicit Interop integrations and is already in use by nTop’s partner ecosystem.
- nTop Plugin for EOSPRINT— The first Implicit Interop software connection will be available with the upcoming release of EOSPRINT 2.14 in June.
- nTop Implicit File (.implicit) — A new nTop file format used to directly exchange implicit geometry without meshing, resulting in smaller file sizes at lossless precision.
Scaling operations
To facilitate the generation and management of custom or one-off designs at scale, the software development has developed nTop Automate. This solution enables users to multiply the impact of engineering resources by executing nTop workflows through a programmatic environment.
In addition to the Windows deployment, nTop 4 introduces nTop Automate for Linux, which allows engineers to unlock more economical cloud computing or use available on-premise high-performance computing (HPC) resources.
Lastly, new programs to accelerate adoption of AM
New to nTop 4 is nTop Accelerate, a range of one-to-one training services, custom workshops, and design sprints to help nTop’s customers best meet their program objectives. nTop also continues to invest in onboarding programs — like nTop Learn, nTop’s online learning center — to ensure that engineers can deliver value as fast as possible.
The company is fostering discussions around these new upgrades at Rapid+TCT 2023, booth #2247.
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