Engineering Software

[Kevin M]

Can anyone recommend good engineering software for doing stress calculations, structural design & analysis, etc? I am badly out of date on what is available these days. It needs to be something that can be run on a PC, which may rule out some of the FEA software.

Thanks,

Kevin

 

[Mark Worthington]

I've heard good things about ProE. The student edition can be had for a reasonable price on Ebay.

 

[Bob Putnam]

Dedicated FEA programs - none of which are cheap...

Cosmos
MSC
Ansys
Algor

Solidworks has an "Express" version of Cosmos built in.

 

If you need to know anything about ANSYS let me know. I've been using it nearly all day, every working day, for the last 20 years. (I have it solving a problem on my computer right now.) I certainly don't know everything about it, but I might be able to help you with structural analysis (stress, modal, etc), heat transfer, dynamics, etc. I've dabbled with electromagnetics and electrostatics, but not enough to be competent.

Are you interested in CAD (Pro/E, CATIA, UG, SolidWorks, etc) or CAE (ANSYS, NASTRAN, ABAQUS)? Computer-aided design programs have a very different purpose than computer-aided analysis programs. To grossly oversimplify, CAD understands the geometry, CAE understands the physics. A world of difference.

John Crawford
Scottsdale, AZ

 

[Kevin M]

John,

You have mail.

Kevin