Structural optimization often results in complex shapes that are difficult to realize under specific manufacturing processes. Incorporating manufacturing constraints in the setup of the optimization problem can help to reduce and even eliminate manual post-processing, speed-up the design process, and ensure optimality of the final shape.
However, manufacturing constraints also include limitations related to the numerical framework (Optimization Method, Optimization Region, Mesh, etc.). The following documentation discusses the basic details of their formulation and numerical implementation together with limitations and best-practices for efficient usage.
Note: The description "average element size," denoted dxAVG, appears frequently in the numerical implementation of manufacturing constraints. For 3D solid domains, the average element size is defined as the average of the cubic root of the volume over all elements.
Member Size
The properties of the Member Size category, of the Manufacturing Constraint object, enable you to control the size of the structural features of your model as well as the distance between these features. See the following sections for descriptions of these properties and their use: