HEEDS includes proprietary design exploration functionality that is used to simultaneously leverage multiple global and local search strategies. HEEDS adapts the search strategy as it learns more about the design space. It requires no search algorithm expertise on the part of the user, but easily incorporates user intuition through its collaborative search capabilities. This process allows you to identify higher performing families of designs with minimal simulation time and cost.

Employing simultaneous search strategies to discover better designs, faster.

Most traditional design exploration tools require highly specialized optimization skills and simplification of models to allow for efficient search. However, by using HEEDS, you can streamline design exploration using your existing models no matter the complexity or number of parameters and constraints. Specify the time you are willing to wait for an answer, and the intelligent search functionality will adjust search strategies to find better design alternatives in the allotted time.

This process allows you to identify higher performing families of designs with minimal simulation time and cost.
This approach, known as SHERPA:

Requires no model simplification, model fitting or surrogates 
Uses hybrid, adaptive intelligent search to find better designs in fewer evaluations
Helps you reduce search time, product development costs and product design risks

Unlike with other design exploration methodologies, HEEDS works well with any number of design variables, constraints, or objectives. So the user is encouraged to set up the design study to reflect the exact engineering challenge being faced, rather than simplifying the search to conform to software limitations. HEEDS is regularly applied to problems with hundreds or thousands of design variables without difficulty.

Fan blade with parametric changes and correlating plots

Just define your design goals and tell HEEDS how many designs to explore and it will help you discover better designs faster. You can include any number of objectives, constraints, and design variables. It’s as simple as that!

Exclusive Search Technology

HEEDS's default search method, SHERPA, uses multiple search strategies simultaneously, and it dynamically adapts to the problem as it learns about the design space. The unique advantages of SHERPA include:

• Speed — SHERPA requires fewer evaluations than other methods and often finds a solution the first time, saving you days or even weeks of CPU time during routine optimization studies.
• Robustness — SHERPA identifies better-quality solutions, for broad classes of problems, and performs global and local optimization at the same time.
• No tuning parameters — With SHERPA, you only need to specify the number of evaluations you want to perform.

These capabilities make deploying design exploration throughout your organization a viable means to achieve innovative solutions. SHERPA removes the traditional obstacles of requiring expertise, iteration, limited deployment, allowing your engineers to focus on their design problem and not being an optimization expert.