Recent content by fkmeyers

Prost, 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...

Now that the discussion seems to have switched to pre and post processors, let’s put things into perspective. These are my opinions and are based on using these products myself. Patran is a dead product. The current version was initially developed in the late 1980s and when released caused a...

A CBUSH is just that. 6 CELAS elements. It would also handle any small seperation between the nodes.

In Nastran you can use a CBUSH element.

Nothing really needs to change. Just realize that in a linear solution the gaps will act like springs and will take both tension and compression loads. If you are using NEi Nastran I recommend you use surface contact.

ABAQUS is a very capable program. I recommend it. It can be difficult to use however. We also use NEi Nastran which has much better nonlinear than MSC.Nastran (without SOL 600) including true surface contact and specialized elements.

Plies tend to be orthotropic so this is a good question. The answer is that it simply takes the normal-x, normal-y, and shear-xy components and uses the standard equation for von Mises stress. If you are using NEiNastran, there is an equation in the QRG under STRESS in the Case Control section.

I used COMSOL about 3 years ago and found it only worked well with simple problems. If that limitation is still there I would recommend ANSYS over it.

Thanks! This is great info!

If you are using MSC they should have a MATORT dedicated to 3d orthotropic materials. For NEi Nastran use MAT12. See MSC Linear manual materials chapter for info on MAT9 setup for orthotropic materials.

At the risk of upsetting Garland (Garland, I am apologizing in advance here) I would say just be careful before buying Algor. I will say no more on the subject. You have been advised. I do not use motion software myself but have found the nonlinear transient analysis capability in Nastran...

Have you looked at FEDEM?

Yes. Patran 3 was very unpopular because it was so different from 2.5. There were lots of enhancements but many features that power users used were removed. No command line for example. Also, it was very unstable and crashed often. That part was a big problem for many who used it day long...

When MSC bought PDA they had just released Patran 3.0. Patran had the market share with most big aerospace companies. They bought the company and totally controlled it. They also bought a lot of headaches with Patran 3.0. MSC had previously attempted several times to either purchase or...

My guess is that UGS and ANSYS and Noran will continue to take business away from MSC. This would be MSC's 3rd major layoff but not the last one I bet. MSC gets most of their revenue from big aerospace and automotive companies so if UGS gets at those accounts, MSC is done for. Otherwise they...