Anybody enjoying NeiWorks?

[Jabberwocky]

We ended up purchasing a seat of this software, as all our design is done in SWx it just made sense. However, as I'm progressing through FEA I'm becoming a bit annoyed at a lack of functionality. This is mostly on the post-processing side.

The front-end is very nice, auto-meshing will update straight from your design changes. But I'm not even sure if you can query results in SolidWorks, there's some of that in the NASTRAN Editor, but not quite what I had in mind.

Is anybody else using this program, are you having more luck with your results?

 

[kellnerp]

I use NEiNastran, its big brother which has FEMAP for pre and post processing. Works well and no problem getting results the way I want.

NEiWorks is still new and still has a bit of catchup to do. What did you want to do as far as querying results?

http://www.engtran.com

http://www.niswug.org

 

[fkmeyers]

We use it but also have FEMAP. I know they are adding a lot of new post-processing stuff in their V9 release of the Editor and that all of that will be going into NEiWorks as well. I agree there is some functionality I would like to see sooner than later.

 

[NEiTech]

Like Paul has mentioned, NEiWorks is still a little new and has some catching up to do. While it has all the basic post-processing capabilities, we will be adding much more functionality over the next couple months.

You can give one of us in support a call, or email and we can work out a solution that works best for you.

Mitch Muncy
Noran Engineering Technical Support

 

[Jabberwocky]

Thanks all, I didn't mean to start a rant, I do like the software and its integration. I think my issue is that the FEA model is not selectable, only the Solidworks 'base model' is - so when you want results at a specific location you're out of luck.

In the past I have had some luck taking the model produced by NeiWorks (as it runs through FEMAP to solve anyways) and opening that in the Nastran Modeler to get more precise results - I just wanted to know if there was an easier way yet.

 

[kellnerp]

I think my issue is that the FEA model is not selectable, only the Solidworks 'base model' is - so when you want results at a specific location you're out of luck.

I think you can select results at individual nodes in CosmosWorks as you can in DesignStar, NEiWorks editor, Cosmos/M and NEiNastran. DesignStar has a means to graph results at nodes which I think is also in CW. If you want a set of nodal results along some curve in DesignStar you can put a split line on a face and then there will be nodes right were you want them. Since you can export those results along with nodal coordinates you can make a fairly decent plot in Excel. Needless to say this can be done in the other software as well in some way, shape or form.

DesignStar integrates with SolidWorks, but you can turn this capability on and off.

http://www.engtran.com

http://www.niswug.org