Altair Inspire

Why Inspire?

Simulation-Driven Design From Day One

Most simulation tools are built for analysts who receive geometry from someone else. Inspire flips that model. It is built for the people who create geometry — design engineers, product designers, and architects. The interface mirrors a CAD environment, with sketching, parametric modeling, and construction history tools that feel familiar to anyone who has worked in SolidWorks, NX, or Creo. But unlike those tools, simulation is embedded directly into the modeling workflow. There is no export, no separate preprocessor, no waiting for an analyst to return results. The designer runs analysis and optimization as naturally as adding a fillet or chamfer.

This matters because design decisions made in the first 20% of development lock in roughly 80% of a product’s cost and performance. By moving simulation upstream — to the point where geometry is still fluid and changes are cheap — Inspire helps teams catch structural problems, reduce weight, and validate manufacturability before committing to tooling or prototypes.

Topology Optimization and Generative Design

Inspire’s topology optimization engine is powered by OptiStruct, widely regarded as the benchmark solver for structural optimization. Users define a design space, apply loads and boundary conditions, and set objectives — maximize stiffness, minimize mass, or target a specific frequency. Inspire then removes material from regions that do not contribute to structural performance, producing lightweight, organically shaped geometry that would be difficult or impossible to conceive manually.

Manufacturing constraints can be applied directly during optimization. This means the software generates geometry that respects real-world production methods: draw directions for casting, overhang angles for additive manufacturing, extrusion constraints for profiles, and symmetry requirements for balanced assemblies. The result is not just a mathematically optimal shape — it is a shape that can actually be manufactured.

After optimization, Inspire’s PolyNURBS tools allow designers to wrap smooth, production-ready surfaces around the raw topology result. This geometry reconstruction step bridges the gap between algorithmic output and a finished CAD model that downstream teams can work with.

Built-In Physics for Structural, Fluid, and Motion Analysis

Inspire includes embedded solvers for multiple physics domains, all accessible through a unified interface. For structural analysis, users can run linear static studies, normal modes analysis, and evaluate stress, displacement, and safety factors — with the added speed benefit of integrated SimSolid meshless technology for large assemblies. For fluid and thermal evaluation, a GPU-accelerated CFD solver handles internal and external flow, conjugate heat transfer, and aerodynamic performance assessment. And for mechanisms and linkages, the built-in motion module (powered by Altair MotionSolve) simulates dynamic behavior, extracts loads, and feeds results directly back into structural analysis.

This multi-physics coverage in a single tool eliminates the handoff overhead that plagues traditional workflows, where different solvers, different file formats, and different interfaces slow down every iteration.