Introduction

For both Standard Design and Custom Design cases, the Design evolution tab provides a graphical representation of the optimization progress. Available for both running and finished cases, this tab tracks the number of completed iterations, offering clear visibility into how a design evolves in relation to the defined objectives and constraints.

Two types of graphs are displayed within this tab:

1. Overall Design Performance: Located at the top of the page, this graph tracks the global performance metric of the optimization process. Because the solver aims to minimize this value, a lower score indicates better performance.
2. Target-Specific Evolution: Located at the bottom of the page, separate graphs detail the progression of each individual objective and constraint. Comparing these graphs reveals which specific targets are dominating the optimization process.

The data points on the overall performance graph are color-coded to indicate the feasibility of each iteration:

1. Green: The best feasible iteration achieved so far.
2. Blue: A feasible iteration that did not outperform the most recent green design.
3. Red: An infeasible iteration where one or more constraints were not met.
4. Grey: Intermediate data points.

All data points on the graphs are interactive. Selecting a specific iteration highlights it with a thick circular marker across all visible graphs. Iterations can be navigated by clicking the data points directly, using the navigation arrows, or typing a specific iteration number into the input field at the top of the page.

Standard Design

In Standard Design cases, selecting an iteration generates a 3D representation of the specific heatsink configuration evaluated during that step. Alongside the visual model, the governing parameters for that iteration are displayed, including:

• The heatsink type (e.g., pins, fins).
• The assigned manufacturing technique and material.
• The total number of elements.
• Detailed geometrical dimensions.

Custom Design

In Custom Design cases, a pre-visualization of the generative geometry is displayed alongside the performance graphs.

It is important to note how iterations are classified in this mode. Only the first iteration (the baseline simulation) and the final iteration (the verification step) are evaluated as fully feasible designs. The entire iterative optimization process occurring between these two points is classified as intermediate data (grey markers).

How to interpret the intermediate iteration data

During Custom Design, the target values plotted for intermediate iterations should only be used to understand overarching optimization trends. They do not represent exact, converged performance metrics. The exact performance and final target values of the optimized generative structure are only assessed and confirmed during the final verification step.