Future of MSC ?
Future of MSC ?
(OP)
Poor old MSC have been taking quite a battering in the last 12 months, firstly with UGS terminating Nastran for Windows, then inviting N4W users to ditch MSC and take up Femap bundled with NX/Nastran, and more recently UGS have extended their agressive marketing campaign to target MSC/Patran users.
Now MSC announce a workforce reduction in a bid to "streamline" their business operations.
Their future strategy appears to be largely reliant on the all new (?) Bangalore developed SimEnterprise (SimExpert?) multi-disciplinary software package (which the MSC web site over hypes to the point at which you begin to question the validity of it all). However this product has still to hit the masses yet and has had a very long gestation peroid. I learnt of this product probably two or more years ago and saw a demo movie of it back in October 2005.
But I suppose there are enough hard core Patran/Nastran users (especially in aerospace) to keep them ticking over at least for a while, until they discover better things ...
Now MSC announce a workforce reduction in a bid to "streamline" their business operations.
Their future strategy appears to be largely reliant on the all new (?) Bangalore developed SimEnterprise (SimExpert?) multi-disciplinary software package (which the MSC web site over hypes to the point at which you begin to question the validity of it all). However this product has still to hit the masses yet and has had a very long gestation peroid. I learnt of this product probably two or more years ago and saw a demo movie of it back in October 2005.
But I suppose there are enough hard core Patran/Nastran users (especially in aerospace) to keep them ticking over at least for a while, until they discover better things ...





RE: Future of MSC ?
small engineering companies have no need in getting the whole blown nastran package, with MARC and DYTRAN, or getting nastran MD.
On the other hand, they are offering MSC/FEA and MSC/AFEA for a price similar to the one of neinastran/femap, and they have much more experience.
RE: Future of MSC ?
Bear in mind that they do /far/ more than just FEA, and seem to be attempting to become the Microsoft of automotive simulation software.
Cheers
Greg Locock
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: Future of MSC ?
and you know about composites.. they are the present/future :)
RE: Future of MSC ?
Sorry, but there are several other vendors that also offer very comprehensive composite solutions (Lusas, Samcef ....) with pre and post processing facilities to match. Unless you've tried them all, I'd step back from making a judgement!
RE: Future of MSC ?
JakeRAD, too bad MSC is not hiring, you could be their new spokes person!
RE: Future of MSC ?
When MSC bought PDA, was it that purcase that gave them control of Patran? If so, before 1994 (?), didn't MSC have any pre/post in-house?
Regards
Thomas
RE: Future of MSC ?
RE: Future of MSC ?
Wasn't Patran 3.0 hugely unpopular at the time with many users of 2.5 reluctant to upgrade?
What have you heard about SimEnterprise?
Some time ago MSC funded Fegs Ltd to write a HEX mesher for arbitary volumes, which spawned their medial object technology before MSC pulled the plug.
RE: Future of MSC ?
SimEnterprise does not seem to be what MSC had in mind, or least what their customers did. Not an expert on it but have not heard anything good about it. What you can expect from MSC now is development and support with an Indian accent.
RE: Future of MSC ?
I think that MSC will be around but I'm not sure it's because of technical superiority.
Regards
Thomas
RE: Future of MSC ?
UGS NX/NASTRAN obtained v2001 and have carried out quite a few enhancements since. FEMAP is a native windows product that allows considerable customization with excellent macro's and API programming possibilities. I have used MSC products for 20 years but we made the switch recently to UGS NX/NASTRAN and FEMAP. We are a NASTRAN house since we deal with NASA.
Personally, I think ABAQUS is a far superior finite element program (both linear and non-linear). ABAQUS CAE (pre and post) still has a way to go but it has improved significantly over the years.
RE: Future of MSC ?
Regards
Olof
RE: Future of MSC ?
RE: Future of MSC ?
I have used both programs in the past for contact problems. In fact we bench marked MARC with ABAQUS and found MARC was not able to handle some of our complex non-linear problems. These included non-linear geometry, material, and contact. In all instances we got answers from ABAQUS and in comparative runs it performed significantly faster. Marc was easier to define the contact problem by defining "bodies" as opposed to the slave/master node approach in ABAQUS (I think the more recent version of ABAQUS now has body definition). The issue with ABAQUS may be the pre-processor CAE. It has some nice features but it is also missing some of the more useful features that PATRAN has. We used ABAQUS with PATRAN. When it comes to complex non-linear 3D problems (i.e. geometric plus material non-linearity along with contact) there are very few programs that can compete with ABAQUS.
RE: Future of MSC ?
I've started doing some work with Altair's Hyperworks including their Optistruct product. It's a very nice product with lots of capabilities for a fraction of the prices proposed by MSC. Certainly the interface of Hypermesh has a long way to go before it becomes userfriendly but if you haven't seen it before, you should check it out. It's very flexible when it comes to pre-processing.
We've started working with them to support the development of some new functionalities and I must admit I'm impressed by the effort they are making to meet the targets we give them...
I think on the long run, MSC will pay dearly the price of their arrogance and it can only be a good thing. It means cheaper and better softwares for us.
I've certainly noticed recently in the Aerospace industry, a change of mentalities. People are starting to agree that MSC is not the God Almighty of FEM and that other product could suite their needs better.
What do you guys think?
SkyD.
RE: Future of MSC ?
I agree with you SkyD about keeping your eye on other products. We have been using NE Nastran for several years now with very good success. They are taking a different direction for Nastran which seems to be to listen to what the customer wants, not just the big companies that still use MSC. I think MSC development is driven by their big accounts only. I heard they are outsourcing a lot of development now to India. That should be interesting. Maybe they will relocate all their staff over their as a way to save money. I would not be surprised if their support department is moved (replaced) over their soon.
RE: Future of MSC ?
I used to be able to phone a guy up in the UK to talk through problems, most of which were solved over the phone. Now I have to do it via e-mail and some MSC guys admit at least some of the support people are in India. They are also aware that this doesn't work very well and that customers are not happy; there is a hint that some of the MSC organisation hopes this will fail presumably for the benefit of their part of the empire.
I still think that the product I use (MSC MARC) is better than anything else on the market for what I need to simulate having benchmarked alternatives when I started this work. However, the cost is high and upgrades, particularly to multi-processing, are ridiculous. Their new licenese to token 'upgrade' path is little better if like me you use a single product.
I hope they sort things out.
RE: Future of MSC ?
www.arclen.com
RE: Future of MSC ?
"Ansys workbench with ANSYS clasic is far ahead of them (MSC) on all fronts."
I'm going to defend MSC here. You can't possibly say that ANSYS is ahead of MSC on all front; its nonsence. I've benchmarked ANSYS against MSC products and ANSYS couldn't produce a technical result for the job I had to solve - pure and simple. Even their support people said it couldn't (and still can't) solve the problem I have. With your problems your statement may be true but then you should qualify it accordingly.
RE: Future of MSC ?
www.arclen.com
RE: Future of MSC ?
Your link doesn't work !
RE: Future of MSC ?
RE: Future of MSC ?
Your statement about ABAQUS developers and tech support, apart from not making sense (i.e. tech support are supporting CAE too, why would they use Hypermesh for this!?) is also untrue. Care to provide some evidence for this claim?
RE: Future of MSC ?
RE: Future of MSC ?
RE: Future of MSC ?
RE: Future of MSC ?
RE: Future of MSC ?
Good point. But you must not confuse the fact that aerospace companies have spent $$$$$ training employees to use Patran for the last 20+ years with the fact that MSC is not really doing anything with it. MSC will keep making money on it with little development effort because Aerospace will continue to pay maintenance on it. FEMAP and Hypermesh are chipping away on this but Patran is still out there and it is hated. What engineers want and what companies will buy are not always the same. MSC has made it a dead product, not the consumer.
RE: Future of MSC ?
Now the question--given MSC's almost overwhelming advantage in market share say 15 years ago in particular industries, why did they allow the competition to take such huge chunks out of that market share without committing substantial resources towards maintaining that market share with superior products? Certainly greed played a large part; perhaps hubris was the biggest contributor?
RE: Future of MSC ?
Has anyone else noted how many of their board members have their roots at SDRC? I don't know enough about SDRC to know whether that's good or bad.
Tom Stanley