Design the Best Wheel with Fusion 360 and Generative Design

Learn how to use a new engineering simulation tool called generative design to create highly efficient shapes that optimize the stiffness and weight of a part.
This video tutorial shows how to design a wheel using Autodesk Fusion 360 and generative shape design. I walk through the process of creating radial symmetry, setting up the constraints, applying loads and analyzing the results.
I'll show how the result of the generative simulation can be redrawn, and then checked with finite element analysis (FEA) to ensure that the part is strong enough for the expected loads.
00:14 Example outputs of generative design
00:45 Drawing the boundary solid
01:13 Setting up the simulation
02:00 Simulation results
02:25 Redrawing the optimized part
03:36 Verify the design with FEA
05:09 Further optimization
06:47 Comparison of designs
07:07: Recommended Reading
Full write up on my blog: www.adambender.info/post/gene...
Instagram: / bender_designs
Links (Amazon links are affiliate links, and help the channel without costing you anything):
Shigley Mechanical Design: amzn.to/31L3eg2
Ashby Material Selection: amzn.to/2F9pkPG

[@RealEngineering]

I'd be really curious what programs like this generate if you gave it the material properties of bone and the same spatial restraints as say the femur. Just bought both of those books using your affiliate links. Used both of them in college. Fantastic resources to have on your book shelf.

[@roam3r690]

What if we were to optimize bone structures to make them lighter/stronger etc, just like this wheel?

[@AdamBender]

wow, awesome to see you on here! I watch all your videos, they're fantastic. That would be super interesting to see, I can almost bet you'd end up with a shape that looks like the femur. Nature is pretty skilled at shape generation too (over thousands of generations). Those are probably two of my favourite engineering textbooks, really great resources.

[@anastasioskarvelakis530]

@@AdamBender Just search topology optimization and lattice structures in science direct or even in google scholar and a lot of interesting papers will pop up,engineers are way past imagining they are designing and even manufacturing as we speak

[@PopcornSticker]

well, having british racinkg green 3d printed carbon spine with titanum honeycomb structure would be pretty dope tbh

[@S7udio1381]

I'm pretty sure this is not generative design, but rather topology optimization. Generative design is not available for a regular customer yet, though Autodesk is really developing it. It's called Dreamcatcher, but it produces millions of designs and then ranks them by some criteria.

[@hkb666]

topology optimization is part of the generative design

[@legallyblind4939]

Though I enjoyed the video very much I think the title and terms used in the video are misleading since this isn't actually generative design it's topology optimisation. They're similar but definitely not the same. Still a great video. Cheers!

[@macarows4014]

What is the dofference?

[@legallyblind4939]

@@macarows4014 I'm not sure about the specifics. But what's for sure is that topology optimization is free to use, while Generative Design is only available in the paid version of fusion 360. I think there are some things you can do with Generative Design that you can't with Top. Optimization, for example specifying a method of manufacturing. And I believe that Top. Optimization only uses the model you give it, and removes unnecessary material, while Generative Design first fills out any available space and then removes unnecessary material. As I said, the differences aren't huge as far as I'm aware, but perhaps there are some key differences in the coding behind both. It would be interesting to see how results would differ (or not differ) if you would feed both methods similar or if possible equal inputs.

[@macarows4014]

@@legallyblind4939 I just did quick Google search. Generative design is definitely GAME changer - it builds the volume in whole another level that is traditionally known. Topology is just material reduction, but not AI powered thoughtful building of new object.

[@vladimirkunitsa4620]

Very cool lesson! I have been looking for at least some information on this topic for a long time and your video fully reveals the principles of modeling a wheel. Thank you so much.

[@stefanguiton]

Amazing tutorial, looking foward to more!

[@laurenjatana3870]

This is so cool! Generative design. Thanks for making such a nice video

[@Daddy_Damo]

Your new videos are great! Keep em coming!

[@mechonmaster6953]

Thank you man enjoyed lot and learned 😊

[@Semtex777]

Thanks Adam, very imformative

[@deniszatsepin9276]

Incredible work, thx lot!

[@Emre-co7wc]

Thank you!

[@JaySmith91]

Those are like my two favourite books. You have a sophistocated taste.

[@wajeehhassan4638]

Amazing! :)

[@Pavleone]

Thank you! This gave me idea for my master thesis

[@Petch85]

I think you should be carful when using optimization to design your parts. Optimizations tends to explore designs at the boundary of the formulated constraints. You can see this in your topology optimization example in this video. You constraint the solution to be a disk, and the solution you got was to use the full thickness of the disk. The "optimal" (local minimum) solution you found was constrained by the thickness. Also you design depends on your mesh (size and shape), thus refining the mesh may give you another "optimal" design. The design you obtain here is the "optimal" solution loaded with a constant pressure. This means that you have moved all material such that it helps in this load case as best it can. But say you had another load on that wheel (could be side ways, could be torsion), now you have only optimized for one load case, but you might have many more, and you may have reduced the strength (stiffness) in one of the other load cases by 50% just to get a 1% benefit in the load case you have included. Thus I would have liked to se the solution using multiple load cases. Especially when explaining the idea of optimization, you can find some grate examples of how different the "optimal" design is depending on how many load cases are included in the optimization, and how that are weighted.

[@UnrealOcean]

very informative appreciate ya

[@MrKadvaga]

Awesome video and great intro to optimization. A few things seem off about the finished design that seem like artifacts of the way the radial symmetry was achieved by copying a section and mirroring it around to make a wheel. You can see the tree shapes are not symmetrical, one arm is thicker than the other. It seems like this is an effect of telling the system to compute for a force coming from down but not realizing that the location of that force will at some point be coming from every point along the wheel rim. I suppose to get the most accurate result you'd have to compute for infinite planes of symmetry about the axle. With those alternating limb thickness you might even get a sort of wub-wub as it rolls if it deflects unevenly depending on material. Funny enough as soon as I watched this video I spotted a car wheel with almost the exact same Y pattern, with 5 Y's instead of the 6 in your design. Another thing about this wheel, if you turn your head so "down" is coming through the fork of one of the Y spokes, something looks off about the way the material is balanced around the axis. I am not sure if that is something that looks strange or actually would impact performance though.

[@AdamBender]

Thanks for watching! Yeah, it would be ideal if fusion would let you apply radial symmetry planes, that would provide a more accurate result. Programs like Hyperworks let you do this. That would better solve for every single point around the wheel as it rotates, as right now there is definitely a weak spot at the end points of the 1/3 arc. They're effectively cantilever beams right now, but in a truly symmetric design, they'd always be beams supported at both sides. Pretty close though for a demo. Also doesn't take into account and side loading due to turning, or any torque applied from acceleration. Designing wheels is complicated!

[@shmadmanuts]

I've seen a wheel design similar to that just this morning on a BMW (probably not 3d printed, though :) )

[@redcurated4302]

Dude this is so sick. I'm a first year engineering student, could you make a video on doing this with something like a car design? How do these guys take real world data and use it to do generative work?

[@d.donald6855]

Love the Video! Isnt the pressure on the inside of the tire slightly rotated due to the torque of the motor?

[@anthonyrepetto3474]

Excellent, thank you! Regarding the optimization - it seems that, because you were copying and rotating based upon pressure from the wheel below, only, the optimization failed to account for the possibility of *cross-members between each spoke* . From the diagram of stresses, you can see how an A-frame connecting the spokes would help - add those, and the net effect would be to form a second, smaller wheel, centered on the axle, with a radius that matches the length to the forking-point of the spokes. Tensile strength would hold the wheel up... and thickening the rim might be enough to reduce the stress on the bottom feet?

[@flex7468]

Hi, thanks for the video. Do you know if generative design could be used for natural frequency optimization?

[@darkshadowsx5949]

that actually looks similar to a few rims already available except the hole that's not machinable.

[@carlfeynman6980]

Because this was optimized as one third of a real wheel, it didn’t allow for tension forces in the spokes facing horizontally. In a real wheel, the rim acts as an arch, and compressive forces are turned into tension in the horizontal spokes. Since materials are much stronger in tension, this permits much thinner spokes. This is the principle that turns old-timey wooden cart wheels into modern bicycle wheels, which carry similar loads with much less weight. You can see this in the stress simulation: all the stress is carried in the two spokes in compression, with negligible force in the rim or in the horizontal spokes. I learned this thirty years ago in engineering school, so maybe I’m misremembering. I think it was in “Structures” by J. E. Gordon. Thanks for recommending books; I’m always looking for more learning.

[@Galv140577]

In a car wheel there are 4 or 5 bolt holes, positive and negative torque, and varying pressure in 3 dimensions.

[@joalar33]

It's a great Job man, easy way to understand who i can really reduce weight, but i think this is Topology Optimization not Generative Design. Thanks for the video

[@wazimmohamed8814]

Now I understand why 'Y spoke alloy wheels' are trending .

[@aliR33]

I am a mechanical engineering student and I have a product design project using Gen AI and I need information about the algorithms, model and libraries that I can use in this jste project to start my first step in the project and thank you very much

[@PlatypusPGM]

You did not take in consideration the effect of rotation would that have changed the design? it would be a force field with a greter force the further you go from the axle and the faster the speed

[@steelmilkjug]

Not nearly complex enough.... many other forces are acting on a wheel in motion.... such as rotational torques at various speeds, forces in other axis while going around corners, etc...

[@AdamBender]

You couldn't be more correct about that! Lot's of other variables to consider for a full design. But as an introduction to the topic in ~10 minutes, hopefully this peaks enough people's interest to dive in a bit deeper.

[@danielbyrne983]

The problem I see is that the radial asymmetry was created by the random nature of the mesh. The correct solution would be necessarily radially symmetrical . Trace one half of one spoke and then radially array

[@ogarza3]

this is basically the nismo off-road wheel

[@Modna89]

I like how you don't pause and "uhm" all the time, but your mouse movements are a bit hard to follow along to. When a menu pops up you click something fast enough I have to rewind to catch it. Maybe just say what you're clicking as you do it, to make it easier to follow

[@AdamBender]

Good suggestion! I'll try to be more clear on what tool I'm clicking/using for the next video. Thanks for watching!

[@PopcornSticker]

IE is future but these aren't particularly beaufitul, so how can nice ones like those of BAC Mono be made?

[@VadimBesedin]

I think the final pressure is applied in a wrong way - to small portion of the bottom of the wheel. In really life it will be distributed across the whole bottom half of the wheel, with most pressure in the center.

[@traction9961]

Hi.. Great video, but this is shape optimization not generative design.

[@PaulMurrayCanberra]

You are missing torsional stresses from braking and accellerating.

[@avitolourenco]

is this generative design? i would call it Topology optimization. Generative design is where you just mention the loads and it creats the geometry, i.e the entire geometry with constraints

[@mrspeaky6885]

Where are maa viddeeoosss

[@cvspvr]

have you checked to see if square wheels are superior to round wheels?

[@IIoWoII]

Holy shit your voice sometimes, lol.

[@rafaelmontserrat4443]

so you're trying to sell this video like you're doing doing generative design when you're actually doing topology optimisation, wow. xD

[@Michallote]

Your wheel is not symetric

[@Todestelzer]

Too expensive to use as a hobby user. A generative design cost around 20€. I rather model it a couple times myself and check it with a static stress analysis. All the people showing it on YT used a student or educational license where they don’t have to pay for it.

[@lispy8085]

THIS IS NOT GENERATIVE DESIGN PLEASE CHANGE THE TITLE

[@gcase08]

The voice fry is so gross I could not watch.