Topology optimization is a renowned structural optimization approach used to compute the optimal topology for the enhancement of structural performance. It has been in common practice in different engineering fields such as automobile and aerospace. However, there still exist gaps between topology optimization and its engineering operations, which considerably impedes topology optimization’s applications. One of these gaps is how to make (especially finite element-based) topology optimization results machine-readable, which means, how to transform these into computer-aided design (CAD) models, which are ready-to-use models for manufacturing. In the proposed work the authors adopted a unique methodology that plugs the gap between topology optimization and manufacturing. This methodology seamlessly integrates the structural analysis tool, boundary description tool and standard CAD geometry representation; equipped with the Hausdorff distance approach for 3D printing/additive manufacturing of optimal structures. Initially, we extract the skeleton of the optimal design (in the form of a points cloud) using the level set method, followed by an interpolation technique with shape preservation property, the extracted skeleton is made dense. Incorporating the shape and curvature information of the data set, an adaptive B-spline approximation is devised for fitting a smooth curve through the points cloud. This approach interprets topology optimization results as a parametric CAD model with minimum possible control points and minimum approximation error. The CAD-based optimal designs are then used for additive manufacturing. The numerical results exhibit in detail the validity and accuracy of the proposed method.

拓扑优化是一种著名的结构优化方法，用于计算最佳拓扑以增强结构性能。它在汽车、航空航天等不同工程领域已得到普遍实践。然而，拓扑优化与工程操作之间仍然存在差距，这极大地阻碍了拓扑优化的应用。这些差距之一是如何使（尤其是基于有限元的）拓扑优化结果机器可读，这意味着如何将这些结果转换为计算机辅助设计（CAD）模型，即用于制造的现成模型。在拟议的工作中，作者采用了一种独特的方法来弥补拓扑优化和制造之间的差距。该方法无缝集成了结构分析工具、边界描述工具和标准 CAD 几何表示；配备 Hausdorff 距离方法，用于最佳结构的 3D 打印/增材制造。首先，我们使用水平集方法提取最优设计的骨架（以点云的形式），然后采用具有形状保持特性的插值技术，使提取的骨架变得密集。结合数据集的形状和曲率信息，设计了自适应 B 样条近似，用于通过点云拟合平滑曲线。该方法将拓扑优化结果解释为具有最小可能控制点和最小近似误差的参数化 CAD 模型。基于 CAD 的优化设计随后用于增材制造。数值结果详细展示了该方法的有效性和准确性。