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...
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.
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...
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...
I think you can use a MAT1 for the core properties, not that this would be the best choice for honeycomb. For foam it should work OK. Typically, we use the PCOMP method for sandwich materials and MAT8 entries for all layers. NE Nastran has stability indexes for the face sheets which can be...
I would recommend the /3GB switch. I think you do need to modify the boot.ini. I would check the noran website knowledge base and see if they have any papers on this part. Then you can see if this model will run with SPARSEITERMODE set to AUTO, which would calculate the SPC forces. What was...
I disagree. Lets assume the percentages of software types (FEA, office, games, etc.) are the same within the main countries (Germany, France, UK, Italy). These countries have large industries and use FEA. Italy is still the worse. The average in that report appears to include Russia...
Not to change the subject but in response to Spirit, yes, someone could take offense to my comment and I take it back as it was poorly worded. However, in the EU, Italy had a 46% piracy rate as compared to Germany which was at 28% and the UK which was at 26%. The report includes Russia which...
Kudos to those who have remarked about what this guy is doing. It only hurts the rest of us that pay for the software when people pirate it. This forum is not for support for unlicensed software pirates. I guess in Italy this is common practice.