Accelerazione del Workflow di progettazione aerodinamica: Un Plugin per Alias basato sulle Radial Basis Functions

This repository contains the full LaTeX source code and final PDF for my italian Bachelor's Thesis in Computer Science at Università Ca' Foscari Venezia.

Author: Davide Zambon Supervisor: Prof. Nicola Prezza Co-supervisors: Prof. Marco Evangelos Biancolini, Dott. Marco Camponeschi

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Abstract

This thesis presents a plugin for Autodesk Alias designed to accelerate the aerodynamic design workflow. The tool integrates Radial Basis Functions (RBF) to bypass costly, full CFD re-simulations that typically take days. It captures real-time geometric modifications made to NURBS surfaces within Alias and propagates these changes directly to the simulation mesh via RBF morphing. This provides designers with an almost instantaneous estimation of the aerodynamic impact, drastically reducing the iterative design cycle.

What's Inside This Repository

• /Tesi_triennale_Zambon_Davide.pdf: The final, submitted version of the thesis.
• /Capitoli/, /introduzione e conclusione: The LaTeX source code of the chapters.
• /main.tex, setup.tex: init files of the thesis
• /bibliography.bib: bibliography in bibitex format
• /images/: All images, diagrams, and figures used in the document.

About the Project

The core of this work is a C++ plugin for Autodesk Alias that bridges the gap between high-fidelity CAD (NURBS) modeling and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation.

The plugin's workflow is as follows:

1. Load Data: The user loads the CAD geometry (NURBS surfaces), the simulation mesh (OBJ), and a pre-calculated CFD sensitivity matrix (CSV).
2. Align Data: A K-D Tree (using nanoflann) is built to align the vertices of the mesh with the corresponding data rows in the sensitivity matrix, creating a new, ordered matrix.
3. Take Snapshot (t=0): The user takes an initial snapshot of the geometry. The plugin samples points from the NURBS control curves, boundaries, and a grid across the surfaces.
4. Live Morphing (t=1): The designer modifies the NURBS geometry in Alias.
5. RBF Propagation: The plugin re-samples the modified curves, calculates their offsets (t=1 - t=0), and uses Radial Basis Functions (RBF) to propagate these offsets to the simulation mesh, creating a morphed_mesh.
6. Almost Real-Time Feedback: The plugin performs a numerical integration using the morphed_mesh offsets and the ordered sensitivity matrix to provide an instant estimate of the change in the aerodynamic coefficient.

This process allows designers to get immediate, quantitative feedback on their geometric changes without ever leaving the CAD environment.

Example

Original CAD & Mesh	Modified CAD & Morphed Mesh

Building the Thesis

The main document is main.tex. It can be compiled using any standard LaTeX distribution (e.g., TeX Live, MiKTeX) with a pdflatex engine.

Citation

If you use this work, please cite it following this example:

@mastersthesis{Zambon2025,
  author  = {Zambon, Davide},
  title   = {Accelerazione del Workflow di progettazione aerodinamica: Un Plugin per Alias basato sulle Radial Basis Functions},
  school  = {Università Ca' Foscari Venezia},
  year    = {2025},
  type    = {Tesi di Laurea Triennale (B.Sc. Thesis)},
  note    = {Relatore: Prof. Nicola Prezza, Correlatori: Prof. Marco E. Biancolini, Dott. Marco Camponeschi}
}