LO 3 – Computational Fabrication

The BAC Mono is a British-built, street legal racecar designed to deliver the most pure driving experience possible. The Mono’s secret to fun lies in its weight: at only 1250 pounds, the car behaves like a scalpel, being able to turn precisely and quickly due to having little inertia.

For its 2020 refresh, BAC had to come up with creative methods to shave mass of this already featherweight machine. Partnering with Autodesk, the engineers at BAC used Fusion 360 to generate a lighter wheel. Compared to the outgoing design, this wheel saved 2.6 pounds. While this may not seem like much on paper, removing unsprung weight from the spinning wheels of a car translates tenfold towards performance. In other words, the new design actually saves about 26 pounds per wheel when the car is in motion!

To me, the majority of generative design is very obvious – the algorithms used to generate these designs have a distinct, hollowed out, weblike aesthetic. Although this is pleasing in some applications, they may not look ideal in others. In the case of the BAC Mono, maintaining the general 5 spoke design of the outgoing wheel was a priority. The end result speaks for itself – a wheel that looks virtually unchanged on the surface but is much improved underneath.