Autodesk redesigned the iconic chair by Hans J. Wegner" Chair JH503, The Round Chair, with leather upholstered seat, 1950. Design Hans J. Wegner. The company "decided to freshen it up a bit and optimize it in terms of cost, development time, material consumption, and product weight - while preserving aesthetics and comfort. To do this, a design inspired into Wegner’s original was fed into software called Dreamcatcher. From a seed design, algorithms generated thousands of variations and subsequently tested them all to find one that optimizes the wanted parameters. Software was subsequently applied in a similar way to optimize production.
Generative Design
original design
The result was the Elbo Chair: 18% less volume, 90% less bending of the wood when you sit in the chair, and 79% less von Mises stress – in other words a lot more equal distribution of weight when you sit in the chair.