Design Exploration: Choosing the Best Manufacturing Method for an Aircraft Bracket

The Part

An aircraft structural door bracket developed in collaboration with Potez Aéronautique, evaluated across two manufacturing routes: additive manufacturing and 5-axis CNC machining. The initial design was a 3-axis machined two-piece assembly, and the exploration objective was to determine which manufacturing route delivered the best structural-to-cost outcome when both were optimized under their respective DFM constraints from concept stage, with integrated cost estimation available at every iteration.

‍

The Challenge

Aerospace companies developing new products need to evaluate materials, geometries, and manufacturing routes while maintaining cost control and production scalability. The conventional approach evaluates manufacturing routes sequentially: design first, then adapt the geometry for manufacturability, then estimate cost. Each adaptation introduces iteration, and the final decision is made with incomplete information about what the alternative route would have delivered if fully optimized.

Potez Aéronautique's team needed to compare AM and 5-axis CNC on a level playing field, with each route fully optimized under its own DFM constraints, structural performance validated, and cost estimated, before committing to either.

‍

The Approach

The engineering team ran AM and CNC design adaptations in parallel within a single Cognitive Design workflow, applying Manufacturing-Driven Design constraints specific to each process from the first iteration, with topology optimization, structural FEA, and cost estimation running concurrently. The cost and performance data across both routes produced a decision matrix that consolidated what would otherwise require three separate software environments and multiple engineering cycles.

The case study documents the parallel exploration setup, the per-route DFM constraint configurations, and the integrated cost-performance trade-off analysis that guided the final manufacturing selection.

‍

‍

Key Results

• 85% reduction in design exploration time versus traditional CAD methods
• 28% weight reduction on the AM-optimized variant versus the 3-axis machined baseline
• Complete cost-performance matrix across 3-axis machining, 5-axis machining, and AM in a single environment

The case study includes the per-route DFM compliance analysis, the integrated cost estimation methodology, and the full three-way comparison table across all manufacturing routes.

‍

Why It Matters

Manufacturing route selection made with incomplete optimization data is a structural bias toward convention. When both routes are fully optimized before the decision is made, the comparison reflects what each process can actually deliver, rather than what the team assumed it could.

Download the case study to see the parallel exploration setup, the per-route cost and performance data, and the complete three-way manufacturing comparison.