Systems and methods for growth-based design

Abstract

Systems and methods are disclosed for generating designs for mechanical parts in a computer aided design (CAD) context. One method includes generating a model of a mechanical part, the model including one or more cells, wherein each cell is comprised of a plurality of parameterized representations, each of the plurality of parameterized representations representing a material property; determining, for each cell, a cell-specific parameter value for each of the parameterized representations; comparing, for each cell, each of the cell-specific parameter values to a corresponding threshold parameter value associated with each of the representations of the material properties; and generating at least one additional cell or removing at least one of the one or more cells based on the comparison of each cell-specific parameter value to the corresponding threshold parameter value.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A non-transitory computer readable medium for use on a computer system containing computer-executable programming instructions for performing a method of generating a design for a mechanical part, the method comprising:
 generating a model of a mechanical part, the model including one or more cells, wherein each cell is comprised of a plurality of parameterized representations, each of the plurality of parameterized representations representing a material property;   determining, for each cell, a cell-specific parameter value for each of the parameterized representations;   comparing, for each cell, each of the cell-specific parameter values to a corresponding threshold parameter value associated with each of the representations of the material properties; and   generating at least one additional cell or removing at least one of the one or more cells based on the comparison of each cell-specific parameter value to the corresponding threshold parameter value.