Automating the Design of an Entire Bracket Family: How Thales Alenia Space and CDS Accelerated 2x the Full Workflow

Thales Alenia Space (TAS) is a leading European actor in space and defense, delivering advanced satellite systems, payloads, and orbital infrastructures for demanding institutional and commercial missions. TAS produces a wide range of antenna reflector tripods (brackets) every year to support diverse satellite payload configurations.

Although these parts share the same functional requirements and are subjected to identical load cases, their geometries differ slightly across programs, missions, and antenna architectures. In this project, TAS engineers must redesign  80+ tripod variants, each following a full CAD–simulation–manufacturability workflow. Their main objective was to automate low-value CAD tasks while exploring new possibilities of optimization for structural performance of every variants.

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Results achieved

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50% lead time reduction

Using one single parametric workflow, TAS and CDS teams achieved a 50% reduction in the total lead time required to design the entire antenna reflector tripod family.

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45% lighter tripods

Relative to the legacy tripod designs, TAS achieved an average mass reduction of 45% per part.

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2 days per bracket

After identifying the most promising iteration, TAS and CDS were able to design each tripod variant in 2 days instead of the initial 2 weeks.

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Following the project, our next step is to determine how Cognitive Design can be integrated into our design and engineering toolchain. Based on the work carried out with CDS, the results are highly promising and indicate a meaningful evolution in the way we approach engineering at Thales Alenia Space.

- Florent Lebrun, Technology and Innovation Lead at Thales Alenia Space

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