Today, Altair announced that rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing leader Materialise has joined the Altair Partner Alliance, making 3-matic STL available to HyperWorks® users. With 3-matic STL, users can make design modifications directly on STL, scanned, and computer-aided design (CAD) data in preparation for 3D printing. In particular, use of this software facilitates the use of topology optimization during the design process. The software works on an STL level to allow users to modify designs, remesh, create 3D textures, and more for an optimal and effective result.
"Materialise is pleased to be able to offer 3-matic STL to HyperWorks users through the Altair Partner Alliance," said Lieve Boeykens, Brand Manager for Materialise. "The opportunities for collaboration between our software and solidThinking Inspire® and solidThinking Evolve®, for example, are extensive. We can't wait to see how this partnership progresses."
The ability to work directly on an STL level makes files ready for 3D printing or finite element analysis immediately and provides a large degree of freedom for the user. Parts of the geometry can be easily swapped or exchanged, whether designed in 3-matic STL or imported from a CAD package. There are several operations that enhance the surface quality of the topology data since users have the ability to replace parts of the design with lattice structures and easily combine multiple topology results into one.
"3-matic STL was used by the team to prepare an OptiStruct® topology result for 3D printing," said Andrew Bartels, Program Manager, solidThinking Inspire at Altair. "It was easy to use for removing fine details, as well as to smooth and thicken the resulting model's parts that would otherwise have been impossible to print. The final model contained two joining parts that literally snapped together when we received them from the printer. We couldn't have printed the model with this level of precision without 3-matic STL."
To learn more about Materialise and 3-matic STL, please register for the upcoming introductory webinar taking place on Sept. 3, 2014 at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
