1. A structure supporting at least one component, the structure comprising: including an arrangement design including a plurality of coupling nodes and a plurality of physical strut elements (struts), each strut being disposed between and attached with a respective pair of the plurality of coupling nodes; wherein the arrangement design results from performing a quantitative optimization of an objective function corresponding to a system performance characteristic of the arrangement design, the system performance characteristic having a specified value, the quantitative optimization comprising: generating a finite element analysis model, the analysis model including boundary conditions and an initial dense 3-D lattice mesh of strut-like finite elements, each strut-like finite element having a respective set of one or more assumed mechanical properties that model a respective simulated strut element, the boundary conditions including one or more input load parameters, and one or more of a mass, a moment of inertia and a thermal characteristic of at the at least one component; computing, with the finite element analysis model, a value for the objective function; optimizing the objective function by executing, on a processor, at least two cycles of an optimization loop, the optimization loop comprising: (a) computing a respective parameter of each strut-like finite element; (b) adjusting the finite element analysis model by: (i) decrementing the assumed mechanical property of a first subset of the finite elements, each element in the first subset having a respective computed parameter that is less than a first threshold; and (ii) deleting, from the finite element analysis model, any finite element in the first subset for which a resulting mechanical property is less than a second threshold; (c) computing, with the adjusted finite element analysis model, an updated value for the objective function; and determining, when the updated value for the objective function is within a desired tolerance of the specified value, that the adjusted finite element analysis model represents a sufficiently optimized arrangement design, and, when the updated value for the objective function is outside the desired tolerance, repeating steps (a) through (c).