A recent thesis by our colleague Davide Zambon at Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia explores a new approach to accelerating aerodynamic design through the integration of Radial Basis Function (RBF) technologies directly within Autodesk Alias. The work, titled “Acceleration of the Aerodynamic Design Workflow: A Plugin for Alias Based on Radial Basis Functions,” demonstrates how geometric modifications applied to NURBS surfaces can be captured in real time and transferred seamlessly to the CFD mesh using RBF-based morphing techniques. This method removes the need for full CFD re-simulations, significantly reducing computational cost and turnaround time.

By incorporating sensitivity data produced by adjoint CFD solvers, the plugin can instantly estimate the aerodynamic impact of local shape adjustments while preserving mesh topology and consistently propagating deformations across all nodes. This ensures complete compatibility between CAD updates and precomputed simulation fields, ultimately enabling a more efficient and tightly connected design–analysis loop.

Developed under the guidance of Nicola Prezza, Marco Evangelos Biancolini, and Marco Camponeschi, the research highlights how RBF Morph can be embedded within industrial CAD environments to support rapid, reliable shape optimization and real-time aerodynamic evaluation.

Read the full thesis here.