Digital Design

This thrust will develop a framework of common, shared theories and methodologies that merges advanced modeling and simulation techniques into a computational design optimization framework, building on the state-of-the-art from both. It will implement them into a computational platform to allow designers to systematically and efficiently exploit the vast design spaces created by today’s and tomorrow’s digital manufacturing technologies. This will provide designers with a suite of computational methods and tools to create designs that optimally utilize the freedom to arrange materials at increasing higher spatial resolution – today this is at the micron scale, but tomorrow it will be at the atomic scale. Our formalism will take advantage of the latest developments in modeling and with complex configurations of objectives, constraints, and optimization variables through the use of ever more powerful computational optimization algorithms. Our software architecture will include middleware and libraries as well as intuitive design interfaces to seamlessly connect engineering and architectural designers with contemporary, emerging, and future digital fabrication technologies to realize customized multifunctional products with unprecedented performance.