Next Generation nTop Modeling Software Enables Faster Design, Greater Precision

The nTop 5 is the latest generation of nTop’s computational design software for high-performance engineering. This version of the company’s flagship product includes integrations from five new partners to its developer ecosystem.

Materialise, Autodesk, Hexagon, Intact Solutions and cloudfluid have all built nTop interoperability into their software to provide users with a better end-to-end process for high-performance designs across simulation and manufacturing applications.

This latest update also features a powerful new kernel that enables designs with greater precision and accelerates common design operations, saving engineering time.

“For over 10 years, our mission at nTop has been to help high-performance engineering teams design beyond the limits of traditional software,” says Bradley Rothenberg, nTop co-founder and CEO. “Our customers have amazed us with the products they’ve developed in nTop — from super-efficient heat exchangers, to ultra-lightweight components for spaceflight and aeronautics, to patient-matched implants that enhance bone fusion, and more forgiving, high-performance golf clubs. nTop 5 is a leap forward in implicit modeling technology and the integration of our new ecosystem partners will expand what our customers will be able to create while streamlining workflows using the tools they know and rely on.”

The implicit modeling software technology enables users to develop complex, high-performance parts and automate their processes to innovate faster. The company’s software platform seamlessly fits into established workflows and integrates with existing design, analysis and simulation tools, making it easy to share design knowledge, accelerate iteration and drive innovation faster than ever before.

Last year, nTop introduced nTop Core, a developer library for software partners that enables their applications to natively read and query information within nTop models. This latest expansion to the developer ecosystem includes mechanical simulation, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and build preparation tools with the following integration partners:

Materialise Magics — Materialise Magics is 3D data and build preparation software and a primary tool on the pathway to production for additively manufactured parts. This integration accelerates the transition from design to manufacturing by massively reducing build preparation and slicing times of high-performance parts through the direct import of nTop designs into Magics. Once inside Magics, users can prepare and validate the build parameters, and generate optimized tool paths. This integration will be available in early access to select companies in Q3 of 2024 and with a broader release in 2025.

“At Materialise, we believe that the future of 3D printing lies in seamlessly handling large and highly complex files, and our partnership with nTop is a pivotal step in that direction,” says Udo Eberlein, Materialise vice president of Software. “By integrating nTop's implicit modeling kernel with our Magics software and NxG Build Processor, we are significantly enhancing the efficiency and reliability of the design-to-manufacture process. This collaboration not only eliminates existing limitations but also accelerates the development of innovative 3D printing applications, enabling engineers to bring their high-performance designs to life with unprecedented ease and speed.”

Autodesk Fusion — Implicit interoperability with Autodesk Fusion enables nTop users to perform a variety of downstream tasks in Fusion and more easily complete the design-to-manufacturing workflow. The nTop users can effortlessly transition their designs to Autodesk’s comprehensive CAD/CAM tools using the nTop Connector add-in for Fusion. Once inside Fusion, users can interrogate a model, integrate implicit models into larger product assemblies, and prepare models for production with the advanced manufacturing tool sets. The nTop Connector is available today in the Fusion App Store, available to all Fusion and nTop users at no additional cost.

“As they should, today’s product designers and manufacturers expect state-of-the-art computational design tools at their fingertips, seamlessly integrated into their CAD workflows,” says Stephen Hooper, Autodesk vice president of Design and Manufacturing product development. “Connecting nTop and Fusion delivers on that expectation, putting high-performance implicit models designed in nTop where engineering teams naturally work with them.”

Hexagon scSTREAM — Advancements in the design of heat sinks, chill plates, manifolds and filters require accurate and rapid CFD analysis. To meet this need, nTop has partnered with Hexagon to integrate data from nTop models into Cradle CFD scSTREAM, a CFD application created specifically for thermal management of large and complex assemblies. The scSTREAM reduces manual processes by 80% and offers 5-10 times faster calculation speeds. The combination of scSTREAM and nTop Core relies on a direct data transfer technology for implicit models that eliminates the need to simplify or compromise users’ design integrity to achieve fast, accurate results.

Intact.Simulation — Intact.Simulation provides mechanical simulation capabilities that remove the meshing bottleneck. With Intact.Simulation, you can load designs directly from nTop without any loss in fidelity and perform linear elastic, modal and thermal analysis solved directly on the implicit model. This enables faster iterations and the ability to analyze designs containing lattices and other highly complex geometries that were simply impractical in traditional FEA tools.

cloudfluid — To address growing interest in advanced design strategies that improve the performance of heat exchangers and manifolds, cloudfluid provides a solution for performing CFD analysis on products containing complex geometric features. With this integration, cloudfluid can import *.implicit models from nTop, set up the simulation on the model without meshing and compute the results quickly using cloud-based GPU processing — powering a significantly faster heat exchanger design workflow.

The nTop 5’s new modeling kernel was built from the ground up to deliver even greater performance and precision for the end user, giving users the ability to responsively generate complex geometries that are intrinsic to many high-performing products. It can take the most complex design challenges and deliver a stronger foundation for expanded modeling possibilities, faster slicing, meshing and rendering operations, and even greater precision.

Engineers across industries can use nTop’s computational design software to develop high-performing, state-of-the-art designs that leverage the benefits of additive manufacturing and create better products.