×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Training or Text Book Advice Needed

Training or Text Book Advice Needed

Training or Text Book Advice Needed

(OP)
Hi all.

I recently got trained on ANSYS Workbench and have now been given the task of analysing a whole range of die cast assemblies.

My problem is that prior to the training, I'd had nothing whatever to do with FEA, not even doing hand calcs. The training has shown me how to use the software but not how to go about tackling an analysis. Does that make sense? I guess I could just plough ahead and with experience I'll improve but how bad will my results be in the meantime?

What I'm really struggling with is what Supports to add and where.

I guess what usually happens is that you learn from colleagues but I can't do that as ANSYS is new for my company and 3 of us are all in the same situation.

Can anyone recommend a book or some training which may teach the fundamentals of FEA and strategies for going about an analysis?

Thanks for any advice.

Ray

RE: Training or Text Book Advice Needed

Hi,
well, there are plenty of - good - books on FE techniques, but due to the situation I'd ask your management for not only a training course on the software but rather a "follow-up" from qualified support people on a "pilot" project of yours. You will absolutely need that IN ADDITION to good books, in my opinion.

Sorry I won't recommend any books here because all I know are in Italian...

Regards

RE: Training or Text Book Advice Needed

(OP)
Thanks for that. We are trying to convince them to do just that.

Ray

RE: Training or Text Book Advice Needed

I agree 100% w/ cbrn here.  You really do need someone knowledgable to review the work you're doing and provide guidance where applicable.  The price paid by not having good answers is almost always the more costly option in the end.

RE: Training or Text Book Advice Needed

This is a very dangeres situation.  You can have garbage in / garbage out and you would not even know it.  You should be able to do some hand calcs to make sure that the  software is doing what you expect it to do.  For static cases Roarks should be able to help you, for dynamics, I usally use Steinberg to check my Random and Sine.  Using Ansys (or any other software) should be one of your tools to do an analysis, you have to correlate with either hand calcs or emprical data to get you to a good number.  

Another book I just picked up is "Finite Elemetn Anaylysis by Saeed Moaveni" which is very detailed in FEA and how to use Ansys.

Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."

RE: Training or Text Book Advice Needed

(OP)
Thanks guys. I will look those books up.

RE: Training or Text Book Advice Needed

TRAINING versus TUTORIAL

   Ray has brought up an interesting point about the Quality of the so called "Training" classes that various FEA companies offer. Most these classes teach you which Buttons / Menus / Commands to use. I don't need a class for that. I can figure out those things myself. Nobody trained me how to use my cell phone or how to program my DVD player. Why do these Instructors that teach FEA classes insult the intelligence of mechanical engineers by spending two days just telling us which Buttons to click in their software.
   That raises the questions "What do you think is the difference between a Training Lesson and a Tutorial". In my view, a Tutorial is something that helps you get familiar with the software. But a Training Lesson, on the other hand, tells you when to use what and what kind of input is needed and how to verify what you are getting. Yes, critcs will argue that all that stuff cannot be taught in 16 hours or 24 hours. But atleast, having a Training Lesson that will make me think and confident is better than a Tutorial that shows me the GUI.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources