Why lattices? The rationale for lattices in 3D - GrabCAD Blog

Additive manufacturing enables engineers to employ design strategies that were never before possible. Prominent among these are lattice structures, which have traditionally been incredibly difficult to both design and manufacture. Lattices offer significant benefits in many applications; here’s an overview. Lattices are just repeating structures Broadly, lattices can be thought of as any repeating cellular structure. In two dimensions, examples of lattices range from nanomaterials like graphene, to woven and knit fabrics, to spoked wheels and welded truss structures. All of these have a basic topology or structure that repeats - either consistently or with some variation. 2D lattices have, in this respect, existed for millennia. Humans have long understood the benefits (both in terms of performance and low design complexity) of repeating patterns. But 3D lattices have always been too difficult to build, and so we never had much reason to consider them. In three dimensions, the options for what a lattice looks like is a bit more broad. Lattices can be made up just of beams that connect at shared nodes. In this respect they look a lot like the 2D lattices described above. But just as a cable knit sweater is a lot more topologically complex than […]