Design Studio 8-Stage Simulation Pipeline
How to take a part from Design Studio through materials, supports, loads, review, mesh, solve, visualization, the technical report — and the debug pass that interrogates the answer.
1. What is it?
On macOS, Design Studio is step 1 of the simulation pipeline, not a side tool.
You author a solver-ready Hex8 solid (preset, SDF boolean, or sculpt). Then you add material, supports, and loads on Conditions. Then Review, Mesh, Solve, Visualization, Tech Report, and Debug. The top-bar stages 1–8 and Guided Workflow are the same path.
"I designed a shaft. Now I clamp one end, put 1 kN on the tip, check the model, keep the Design Studio mesh, run Static Linear, look at von Mises, and export the report."
2. When do I use it?
| Use when | Don't use for |
|---|---|
| A new native 3D part that should go all the way to a report | Jumping straight to Solver Hub with an empty model |
| Any of the 17 domain guides (stress, heat, buckling, fatigue, …) | Treating Design Studio as an export-only sculpt app |
| Learning which native solver answers a concrete question | Assuming every analysis writes a contour — some publish tables |
3. The flow — every action described
Step 1: Design (your 2D or 3D part)
What you do: Author the geometry. Research users design their own parts; starters are optional.
How:
- Dashboard → Start a guided simulation, or top bar 1. Design
- Choose an authoring surface:
| Surface | Use it to |
|---|---|
| 2D / 3D CAD Lab (default) | Blank-slate drawing: line, polygon, nodes, polyline truss. Parametric I / T / C / L, plate-with-hole, crack, airfoil, honeycomb, arch, drone. 3D box, shaft, pipe, sphere, cone, torus, wedge. Extrude 3D and Revolve 3D. Apply to Model, then Continue to Conditions. |
| Design Studio 3D | SDF sphere/box/cylinder/torus, union / subtract / intersect / smooth-union, clay/smooth/inflate/pinch sculpt, X/Y/Z symmetry, body and prop presets. Output is Hex8. Continue to Conditions. |
| Import | Abaqus .inp nodes/elements/BCs/loads as Design geometry. |
- Pick a domain only as a hint for suggested Conditions and default solver.
- Press Continue to Conditions. Do not jump to Solver Hub with an empty model.
Step 5 can still list every native solver.
Why: The solvers consume the mesh you just authored. CAD Lab is the engineering sketch/solid path. Design Studio is the SDF/sculpt path. Both land on the same Conditions → Review → Mesh → Solve → Visualization → Report pipeline.
**What Design does not do:** it does not have to apply supports or loads. Those belong on step 2 (unless you placed them with CAD Fix Node / Apply Load tools — then review them on Conditions).
Step 2: Conditions (material + supports + loads)
What you do: Tell FEA Lab what it is made of, how it is held, and what pushes.
How:
- Pick a material chip (Mild Steel, Aluminium 6061-T6, Titanium, …)
- Press Apply suggested setup for the current domain, or add supports
- Inspect the constraint and load tables. Clear or edit anything that is wrong
and loads yourself (clamp left face, tip load, axial compression, hot/cold temperatures)
Why: Without a support the part flies as a rigid body. Without a load (or a temperature pair) displacements are zero. Suggested setup is a starting point, not a certification.
Step 3: Review
What you do: Read the pre-flight checklist.
How:
- Fix red items (missing mesh, missing material, unconstrained model)
- Warnings (no load on a stress analysis) can be accepted if you know why
Why: Catching a missing clamp here is cheaper than staring at a NaN contour.
Step 4: Mesh
What you do: Confirm the Design Studio Hex8 mesh.
How:
- If the page says Design Mesh Ready, continue — do not Generate Mesh
- Generate Mesh is for sketch presets that are not yet native Design Studio solids
Why: Remeshing would throw away the authored solid.
Step 5: Solve
What you do: Run the analysis that answers your question.
How:
- Leave Show every native solver on (research default). The menu is
- Or turn it off to see only the current domain's kinds.
- Press Run <analysis>
- When a result exists, press View Results
grouped: Structural, Vibration & dynamics, Thermal, Stability, Materials & damage, Multiphysics, Research.
Native solvers you will actually hit:
| Question | Solver |
|---|---|
| Will it bend / yield under a steady load? | Static Linear |
| Does it yield and keep going? | Static Nonlinear |
| Natural frequencies? | Modal |
| Heat soak / thermal stress? | Thermal Steady-State / Thermo-Mechanical |
| Sudden bowing? | Linear Buckling |
| Fatigue life after a stress field? | Fatigue (run Static Linear first) |
| Crack driving force? | XFEM / Fracture (structured table) |
| Laminate first-ply failure? | Composites (structured table) |
| Tube / cavity modes? | Acoustics (structured table) |
| Reliability of yield? | Stochastic |
Step 6: Visualization
What you do: Read the field or the structured table.
How:
- Contour + deformation multiplier for field solves
- Results → Detail for fracture, fatigue, composites, acoustics, IGA, PINN
- The number in the console is the same number as the report
Step 7: Tech Report
What you do: Export the evidence.
How:
- Open Technical Report / Export Report
- The report records geometry, materials, BCs, backend, runtime, and
limitations. It does not certify the part.
Step 8: Debug
What you do: Interrogate the answer before you trust it.
How:
- The Failure-Lab defect detectors run against YOUR model: floating part,
- The solved field stays on screen while the findings are read
- Verify & cite (scientific verification) and the Trust Coach verdict
- Refine & rerun until the answer stops moving — that is the evidence
no load, line-clamped shaft, unit slip, all-tet bending, flat field
4. Problem use cases (native solvers)
| Domain | Problem | Design Studio start | Solver at step 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Static structural | Shaft clamped, 1 kN tip load — deflection and von Mises vs yield | shaft | Static Linear |
| Dynamics | First bending frequencies of that shaft | shaft | Modal |
| Thermal | 100 °C face to 20 °C face | torso-box | Thermal Steady-State |
| Buckling | Shaft in axial compression — eigenvalue load factor | shaft | Linear Buckling |
| Vibration-fatigue | Cycles to failure from the static stress field | shaft | Fatigue (after Static Linear) |
| Fracture | K_I / K_IC utilisation on a block | head-cube | XFEM / Fracture |
| Composites | 0/90/0 first-ply check on a plane-stress laminate coupon | laminate-coupon | Composites |
| Acoustics | Quarter-wave tube modes vs f_n = (2n−1)c/(4L) | torso-box | Acoustics |
| Multiphysics | Heated and loaded block | torso-box | Thermo-Mechanical |
| Optimization | Where to remove material under the same tip load | torso-box | Static Linear, then Optimization |
| Importing | Practice the eight stages before swapping in CAD | shaft | Static Linear |
| Nonlinear | Overload that yields mild steel | shaft | Static Nonlinear |
| Contact | Contact-ready Hex8 solid | head-cube | Static Nonlinear |
| Manufacturing | Hot-face / cold-face residual thermal stress | torso-box | Thermo-Mechanical |
| Stochastic | Probability the shaft stays below yield | shaft | Stochastic |
| Large strain | Deflection no longer small | shaft | Static Nonlinear |
| Cloud execution | Same job locally; cloud is only the venue | shaft | Static Linear |
Each of these is a button on Guided Workflow → 1. Design. The button loads geometry only. You still walk Conditions yourself.
5. Boundaries of truth
- Design Studio presets are bounded solids, not production CAD. A "wing"
- Suggested Conditions are a cantilever or thermal-face convention, not
- Fracture, fatigue, composites, acoustics, IGA, and PINN publish
- Fatigue requires a prior Static Linear stress field.
- Nonlinear buckling on continuum/shell models is bounded; the corotational
- The technical report is a record of what ran. It is not a code-compliance
is an extruded plate, a "shaft" is a cylinder of Hex8 cells.
your bolted joint.
structured tables. They do not invent a contour when the kernel has none.
truss Riks path is the native nonlinear-buckling driver.
certificate.
Agent Hub — watch the app while an agent drives it
When Settings → Agent Dock is on, the macOS window shows Agent Hub in real time:
- Top bar Agent Hub chip (turns Agent · live while a dispatch is running)
- Overlay on the workspace: current action, last six events, listening port
- Bottom drawer AGENT tab: full live log
- A mutating dispatch from the dashboard opens Guided Workflow so the mesh, stage, and results actually appear
SSE /events still streams to external clients; the overlay does not depend on a connected SSE client.
6. What "done" looks like
You have a Design Studio Hex8 part, a named material, visible supports and loads (or temperatures), a green Review, an untouched native mesh, a solve that wrote either a field or a structured domain result, a visualization that matches that result, and a report that names the backend and the limitations.
Keep exploring
Open the interactive workspace — mesh, solve, validate and export in the browser.
Start a guided solve