I have heard of this before with another company called CSAR which did it with their version of Nastran and I specifically stayed away from them because of it. I use NEi Nastran and they do not have this practice. It seems very unfair because if I purchase a faster computer should I also have...
You are correct that an RBE2 is rigid. An RBE3 is an interpolation element. It does not add stiffness but instead is used for 3 basic features:
1. distributing loads from a single point to several points.
2. distributing mass from a single point to several points
3. connecting...
These are 2 totally different products. Adina is a dedicated non-linear solver and is not integrated at all into SolidWorks like NEiWorks is. If you use SolidWorks then NEiWorks will have a lot of advantages. They have a good non-linear solver and do general contact and welds well. They...
I would talk to Noran. Fusion is based on Solid Works and is very similar to NEiWorks which is what I have been using. It supposedly has the Solid Works geometry engine in it but not all of the features of Solid Works like drawing generation. Still, it seems like a great value. I own my own...
I have NEiWorks and love it. As DMACX mentioned, Fusion is just NEiWorks with Solid Works included. The product "does" handle shells (quad and tri), composites, assemblies, etc. If you can get NENastran, Solid Works, and the NEiWorks modeler for $2000 that would be an insane deal. I am not...
Murree
Does the engineer in this "large aeronautical company" actually use NEiNastran? The comment almost sounds like something another FEA vendor would say and this guy is just passing on.
We use NEiNastran's non-linear all the time and it was one of the main reasons we have switched from...
NASTRAN SOL 106 is what I use and it does handle post buckling and shear buckling. If you run SOL 105 you get the linear buckling solution which assumes small displacements and no follower forces. It is useful for getting the initial shape at the point of bifurcation. SOL 106 will also do...
Most general purpose FEA programs with decent nonlinear can do this. ABAQUS, ANSYS, NEiNastran to name a few. I would talk to them about your specific application and have them run a model similar to your specific problem.
The contact is done at the element level after the meshing is done. It is actually done in the solver. The preprocessor has manual surface to surface contact and as I understand UGS is adding automated contact to FEMAP. NEiNastran has automated contact on the element level which means you can...
The advantage of using welded contact is that you can easily change it from a pure weld to bi-directional slide or general contact. Once nodes are merged they have to be unzipped in FEMAP if you later want to add contact. In many cases we run linear statics initially and later do nonlinear and...
GBor,
We are not talking about meshing which I know Algor can do like any other preprocessor. We are talking about automated surface contact where meshed surfaces in contact or near contact are automatically welded using surface contact weld elements. I know FEMAP has added this in their...
I am not sure if SolidWorks will read in step files but FEMAP will and should interface with Inventor quite well.
The contact works well with assemblies and a tolerance is provided to distinguish between gaps that are intended and tolerances. I am sure there are situations where it will fail...
I would say the meshing has improved greatly in FEMAP since 2002 with the release of FEMAP V9.1. There is better handling of bad solid geometry for starters. Also, with NEiNastran V9 you do not need to worry about matching mesh types in assemblies. You can mesh with tets or hex (bricks) or...
