nTopology 3.1 is here! This release features a brand new Voronoi Volume Lattice Body block that not only generates a lattice body from a Voronoi diagram, but also provides you with access to each individual cell and the porosity value per cell. As with every release, nTopology’s dedicated support team is ready to answer your questions. Please visit support.ntopology.com to gain access to helpful tutorials and support articles.

• 3.0 Installation Folder Change

• Voronoi Volume Lattice Body and Cell Type

• Usage Improvements

• Bug Fixes

3.0 Installation Folder Change

• Starting with version 3.0, we have changed our software name to nTopology from nTop Platform and hence, the default installation folder has been changed to C:\Program Files\nTopology\nTopology.
• This could have impacted your scripts or application calling nTopCL.

Voronoi Volume Lattice Body and Cell Type

• We’ve replaced the Voronoi Volume Lattice Body block with a newer block that features new properties and a new output type called a Voronoi Volume Lattice Body. What’s unique about this block is that you can access the porosity value per Voronoi cell as well as a list of every Voronoi cell via the properties.
• Each Voronoi cell represent a new type called “Cell”, which contains edges and vertices as properties.
• Below is an overview of this new block
  • Location: Beta > Lattices - Generate
  • Name: Voronoi Volume Lattice Body (Beta)
  • Description: Create a Lattice Body from the Voronoi diagram of a list of Points within a volume.
  • Input 01: Seed points
    • Type: Point list
    • Description: List of Points to generate the Voronoi Lattice Body from.
  • Input 02: Thickness
    • Type: Scalar Field
    • Description: Lattice thickness.
  • Input 03: Mesh
    • Type: Mesh, Volume Mesh
    • Description: Mesh or Volume Mesh to generate the Voronoi Lattice Body within. Providing a Volume Mesh will improve the speed of the operation.
  • Output: Voronoi Volume Lattice Body

Usage Improvements

• We’ve updated the Export Slices to CLS (beta) block to give you the ability to export slice stack data of both parts and support structures to a ConceptLaser (CLSv4) file format. The optional support structure slice stack will be saved as the filename of the CSL path input with a prefix of ‘s_’.
  • Location: Beta > Utilities - Exchange
  • Name: Export Slices to CLS
  • Description: Export slice stack data to a CLSv4 file.
  • Input 01: Path
    • Type: File Path
    • Description: Path to export CLS file to.
  • Input 02: Build volume
    • Type: Bounding Box
    • Description: Build volume of the printer.
  • Input 03: Part slice stack
    • Type: Slice Stack
    • Description: Slice stack to generate CLS file from.
  • Input 04: Support slice stack (Optional)
    • Type: Slice Stack
    • Description: Slice stack to generate CLS file from.
  • Output: CLS slice data
• We’ve updated the Scalar Ramp block to throw a warning rather than an error when all output values are the same.
• We’ve updated the Tie Constraint block to throw an error when used with hexahedral elements which are not yet supported.

Bug Fixes

• We’ve made improvements to Simplify Mesh By Amount, Simplify Mesh By Threshold, and Mesh From Implicit Body By Voxels to reduce the vertex complexity around flat regions of a mesh.
• We’ve resolved an issue where the Remesh Surface block was outputting a valid mesh, but the mesh was not considered valid when served as an input to the FE Surface Mesh block.
• We’ve resolved an issue where sections from a previous file were showing up empty in a new file.