Tom Grandine, The Boeing Company
Geometry Generation for Analysis and Optimization
Preliminary design requires timely engineering analysis of large numbers of designs. This leads to the requirement that geometric models be created both rapidly and automatically. Moreover, geometric models so created must necessarily be part of a continuous parametric family of designs, all of which satisfy a large number of shape and spatial integration requirements for the intended vehicle family. Although commercially available geometry systems have some of the attributes needed to satisfy geometry generation requirements for preliminary design (e.g. many are parametric), none are ideally suited for this application. For many years (decades, in fact), we have been pursuing the holy grail of advanced geometry generation tools which satisfy both the stated and unstated requirements imposed by preliminary design of advanced vehicles. This talk will describe the status of our quest as embodied by the Boeing General Geometry Generator (GGG), our current best effort which has enjoyed some success in design space exploration and optimization.