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Just a week after the second edition of the CDFAM Berlin computational design symposium wrapped up at Frank Gehry’s AXICA building, the event organizers have released recordings of all the presentations. The event, which had its first edition in Brooklyn last year, invites academics, engineers, designers, architects, software developers and more to discuss the latest and greatest developments in the field of computational design as related to additive manufacturing.

CDFAM was founded by Duann Scott, who also founded BITS to ATOMS in 2009 and is the Executive Director of the 3MF Consortium. BITS to ATOMS is a consultancy that aims to “explore design for digital fabrication and the business models it enables.” CDFAM can be seen as an extension of this mission as it creates a fertile environment for not only presenting the latest computational design tools and DfAM methodologies but also for interdisciplinary cooperation that can push additive design to new heights.

For those that missed the live symposium but are still interested to learn what was shared, you can find recordings of each of the presentations here. Highlights include the keynote address by Andreas Vlahinos, the CTO of Advanced Engineering Solutions, on the simulation-driven design of lattice structures. In his talk, Vlahinos dives into the challenges involved in simulating beam lattice structures and offers an approach to generating simulation-driven lattices that are optimized for specific performance requirements.

In another presentation, Carbon’s Andrew Sink and Ruiqi Chen showcased strategies to scale up customized 3D printed products through the use of computational design. Considering Carbon’s extensive experience on this topic (its mission is to produce as many as one million custom 3D printed products per month), the talk provided valuable insights into how the company’s software and engineering teams are working together to solve challenges related to the development of an automated workflow for custom prints using computational design, dual cure material science and AM expertise.

CDFAM Berlin also welcomed MIT PhD candidate Kristen M. Edwards to its stage. In her talk, “Evaluating Vision Language Models for Engineering Design”, she draws on her experience in machine learning and engineering design to illuminate how AI tools—specifically multimodal vision language models like GPT-4—are transforming engineering design processes and tasks related to conceptual design, system-level and detailed design, manufacturing and inspection and engineering education.

Of course, these are just a few examples of what was presented at the recent CDFAM event in Berlin. You can find many more talks, related to generative design in the footwear industry, physics-driven generative design, user-friendly implicit modeling and much more. Participating organizations included Rhino3D-developer McNeel, AM construction and engineering firm Arup, DfAM software company Metafold, nTop and Siemens Energy, Dassault Systèmes, Metamorphic, Spherene, ToffeeX, Hyperganic, Trinckle, Navasto, Rafinex, SimScale, Synera, framas and others. The next CDFAM symposium will take place in New York City on October 2 and 3, 2024. The organization is now taking submissions.