nTopology 3.2 is here! This release features a new Triangulate Mesh block that enables you to create triangular meshes from quad meshes. It also features the new Trim Voronoi Volume Lattice Body block, that not only trims a Voronoi lattice body, but also recalculates the porosity value per cell post trimming. 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.

• Triangulate Mesh (Beta)

• Trim Voronoi Volume Lattice Body (Beta)

• Usage Improvements

• Bug Fixes

Triangulate Mesh (Beta)

• We’ve introduced a new block that enables you to create a triangular mesh from a quad or quad-dominant mesh. This will streamline workflows that convert voxel grids into tri-meshes for manufacturing applications.
• Location: Beta > Utilities - Conversion
• Name: Triangulate Mesh
• Description: Triangulate a quad mesh by bisecting quads.
• Input 01: Mesh
  • Type: Mesh
  • Description: Mesh to triangulate.
• Output: Mesh

Trim Voronoi Volume Lattice Body (Beta)

• In nTopology 3.1, we introduced the Voronoi Volume Lattice Body (Beta) block , which gives you a porosity value per Voronoi cell and a list of every Voronoi cell via its properties. Now you can trim the Voronoi Volume Lattice Body by using an overload to the Trim Lattice Body (Beta) block. The porosity value will be recalculated post-trimming.
• Location: Beta > Lattices - Utilities
• Name: Trim Lattice Body
• Description: Trims the voronoi lattice body with the given body.
• Input 01: Voronoi lattice
  • Type: Voronoi Volume Lattice Body
  • Description: Lattice to be trimmed.
• Input 02: Volume
  • Type: Implicit Body
  • Description: Trimming tool volume.
• Input 03: Lattice to remain
  • Type: Inside or Outside Enum
  • Description: Option to keep the lattice that is inside or outside the boundary.
• Input 04: Rounded edges
  • Type: Bool
  • Description: Option to round edges.
• Input 05: Feature tolerance
  • Type: Scalar
  • Description: Minimum feature size of boundary to accurately capture.
• Output: Voronoi Volume Lattice Body

Usage Improvements

• The convention for the overhead angle in the Overhang Constraint block has changed. In previous versions, the angle was defined with respect to the print direction, which is commonly the z-axis. Now the angle is defined with respect to the print plate, which is consistent with industry best practice. See the figure below:

• The order of the homogenized material stiffness matrix has changed when outputted from the Homogenize Unit Cell block (i.e. right mouse click → Export). The old format was based on the Voigt notation (xx, yy, zz, yz, xz, xy). The new format is: 

• The Design Response Constraint block now performs a unit compatibility check between the design response and the constraint value input. The block has been versioned, and the older version deprecated. Models with older versions will still open with a warning.
• Mesh and analysis statistics, including the number of nodes, elements, and degrees of freedom, are now available as properties in the FE Model, FE Connector, Static Analysis, Modal Analysis, Buckling Analysis, Thermal Analysis, and Topology Optimization blocks.
• For those with GPU acceleration enabled, you can now cancel GPU tasks via a progress bar that appears while renders are compiling. 

• We’ve introduced a new modal window that will warn you if your CPU is not configured to run nTopology due to AVX not being enabled. The modal window will link you to the following article on our support site:nTopology System and Licensing Requirements Guide Below is the modal window as well as the error message that will be displayed in the log panel. 

Bug Fixes

• We’ve made improvements to our cross highlighting logic, so when you select a variable, all notebook sections, blocks, and chips that are referencing the selected variable are now highlighted.
• We’ve resolved an issue that prevented the export of a curve list where some or all curves were intersecting.
• We’ve resolved an issue where quad-dominant mesh properties were inaccurately reported.
• We’ve resolved an issue with cylinder gradients that will improve meshing and slicing output quality.
• We’ve resolved an issue with the UI control for scrubbing values where the selected speed on the speed wheel was producing values in the associated input off by three orders of magnitude.