N4W and Femap news release

[tstanley]

Regarding the press release from UGS and their agreement with MSC, does anyone have an insight as to what is going to happen to Nastran for Windows from MSC?

Here is a link to the press release:

http://www.ugs.com/about_us/press/press.shtml?id=4490

Regardless of how people feel about MSC's lack of service, would it make sense for them to leave their customers high and dry?

Tom Stanley

 

[dmacx]

My guess is that MSC can only offer these customers an alternative pre/post processor at this point and let them keep the solver portion of their license. I heard MSC was not pushing FEMAP and was planning on phasing it out anyway. There are options for these customers. Supposedly Noran Engineering (NEiNastran) still has very good relations with UGS. We use NEiNastran now and switched from MSC recently so none of this is a real surprise.

 

[ThomasH]

Is there any official information available from MSC on this subject?

I find i a bit strange that UGS does this concidering how they got access to the Nastran code. And also, if they want to "kill" some of the competition, are Noran and NEiNastran safe?

Does anybody know the price for maintenace for NX Nastran and NEiNastran, is it the same as N4W?

 

[dmacx]

Noran is not in the same situation as MSC was with UGS. MSC supposedly was not updating their customers with the latest FEMAP releases (they were still distributing FEMAP V8.3 while FEMAP is now on V9.1). MSC also has been pushing a different pre and post and was not selling much new FEMAP. We are on FEMAP V9.1 with NEiNastran and they even have this up on their main webpage so customers can get it. We paid 20% for the maintenance on a package that ran around $12k for everything including nonlinear and advanced dynamics. So far we are very happy with it.

 

[ThomasH]

Does anybody know if Noran might have the same idea as UGS and offer NEiNastran to former N4W clients at a very favorable price? I won't say that $12k is "bad" but I think that in the near future there will be a lot of potential NX and NEi clients "out there".

Unless, of course, MSC and UGS can come to some kind of agreement. I doubt that the story ends with the pressrelease. But I can be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time.

Regards

 

[dmacx]

Unfortunately the story does end with that press release. MSC will offer its customers something, of course... UGS has offered the MSC customers something. You should contact Noran and ask them specifically what they are offering. We got a comptetitive discount so I would assume they have a similar one on the table now for MSC customers under this scenario.