Altair Inspire is the simulation-driven design platform that puts optimisation and analysis in the hands of designers and engineers — early, where concept decisions are cheapest to change. Instead of designing first and validating later, teams generate structurally efficient, manufacturable concepts up front and carry them forward with confidence. The Inspire family then extends that same fast, visual workflow into specific manufacturing processes.
Altair is now part of Siemens, and DDSPLM delivers the combined Siemens Simcenter and Altair simulation portfolio across India — with local licensing, training and engineering support.
Inspire (core)
The flagship environment for concept generation and validation:
- Generative design and topology optimisation — let the load paths drive the shape, then keep what’s manufacturable.
- Structural analysis — fast linear and non-linear stress and modal checks.
- Motion — multi-body dynamics to size loads from real mechanism behaviour.
- Geometry tools — PolyNURBS to turn optimised shapes into smooth, buildable parts.
The Inspire family
- Inspire Form — sheet-metal stamping and forming feasibility: blank shape, draw-die design, springback and thinning, before tooling is committed.
- Inspire Flow — fast CFD for early-stage internal and external flow and thermal studies, tightly coupled to the design model.
- Inspire Cast — casting process simulation to predict fill, solidification, porosity and defects.
- Inspire Extrude — metal and polymer extrusion simulation for die design and process set-up.
- Inspire Mold — injection-moulding simulation for fill, pack, warpage and cooling.
- Inspire PolyFoam — polyurethane foam-moulding process simulation.
- Inspire Print3D — metal additive (DED and binder-jet) process simulation to predict distortion and compensate before printing.
- Inspire Studio & Render — industrial-design modelling, rendering and visualisation.
Why teams adopt Inspire
The whole point is front-loading insight. A designer can explore a stiffer, lighter, more castable concept in an afternoon — without a specialist analyst in the loop — and hand a far better-validated starting point to detailed engineering. For organisations already running Altair HyperWorks, Inspire is the easy-to-adopt front end that feeds the heavyweight solvers downstream.
Industries using Altair Inspire in India
Automotive and EV — topology-optimised structural components (brackets, knuckles, subframes), lightweighting for EV range improvement, battery enclosure concept design, stamping feasibility with Inspire Form before die design is committed.
Aerospace and defence — AM-ready structural brackets, rib and spar concept generation under aerospace load cases, additive build distortion prediction with Inspire Print3D.
Industrial machinery — gearbox housings, pump brackets, press frames — where casting or forging is the target process and Inspire Cast/Extrude can validate the manufacturing concept alongside the structural design.
Electronics — thermal management concept exploration with Inspire Flow before committing to detailed CFD, enclosure bracket and heat sink topology optimisation.
Common questions
What is simulation-driven design? Instead of designing first and then running analysis to check, simulation-driven design uses optimisation (topology, shape, size) to generate the design. The physics defines the form. Inspire automates this process so designers — not just analysts — can explore structurally efficient concepts.
How does Inspire compare to generative design in other CAD platforms? Inspire uses Altair OptiStruct — the industry-standard structural optimiser — under the hood. It supports a broader range of manufacturing constraints (casting, forging, stamping, additive) and offers dedicated modules for each process (Inspire Cast, Form, Mold, etc). Other generative design tools are tighter-integrated with their respective CAD environments but have fewer manufacturing-process-specific capabilities.
Do I need Altair HyperWorks to use Inspire? No. Inspire is a standalone product. But teams that also run detailed FEA in HyperWorks often use Inspire as the front-end concept tool that feeds validated starting points to the detailed engineering phase.
Related
- CAE simulation services — if you need analysis run by our team rather than in-house, we cover structural, thermal and dynamic studies.
- Altair HyperWorks — detailed FEA and optimisation suite that Inspire feeds into for production-level analysis.