ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,608,511, issued on April 21, was assigned to Autodesk Inc. (San Francisco).

"Computer aided generative design with overall thickness control to facilitate manufacturing and structural performance" was invented by Ravi Kumar Burla (Novi, Mich.), Jaesung Eom (Wexford, Pa.) and Jesus Rodriguez (Farmington, Mich.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods, systems, and apparatus, including medium-encoded computer program products, for computer aided design of physical structures using generative design processes, where the three dimensional (3D) models of the physical structures are produced in accordance with a design criterion that limits a m...