Do you use ABAQUS/CAE ?

[ThomasH]

Hi all

Like the title implies I'm curious as to if you experienced ABAQUS users use CAE or prefer any other pre- and postprocessor? The primary alternatives as I see it are Patran/FEMAP/Hypermesh/?.

The reason for the question is that I wonder if somebody make the effort of learning CAE will he/she have a tool that is as effecient as the previously mentioned?

Regards

Thomas

 

[cmgv]

Hi Thomas,

I haven't used any of the preprocessors mentioned above with the exception of Patran, which I have used, but admittedly not to its full capabilities. That said, I have used CAE extensively for the past 6 months and I am really pretty impressed with it. Of course the other preprocessors will offer greater mesh control, but for simple to moderate geometry and meshes I have found CAE to be quite sufficient. I find it more intuitive to use than the ANSYS preprocessor. Also, I'm not sure if you're already familiar with ABAQUS or not, but using CAE has been a great way for me to learn more of the features ABAQUS offers since I run across options I hadn't thought of as I work through the menu screens.

Bottom line...If you have access to CAE I would recommend trying it out. Even if you end up having to switch to Hypermesh, etc, you really won't have lost anything.

Hope that helps,
Curt

 

[ThomasH]

Thank you Curt.

An additional question to you and everybody else:

How do you rate CAE for the occasional user. Let's say that you use it max 5-10 times each year, each time for a few days. Is it very easy to learn or does it require continous use to be efficient?

Any input is appreciated.

Thomas

 

[xerf]

I think it is very easy to learn and use.
It is very well designed , it just takes you through the subsequent steps one needs to follow to set up a finite element analysis. I think it is quite easy to remember how to use it. Also, there is a dedicated manual for learning CAE, and a "Getting started" manual containing tutorials.

 

[bassmanjax]

My only beef with it is that the .inp files it produces are hard work to decipher, even when exported as non-instanced (flat) input files.

Having used I-DEAS and FEMAP as pre-processors over the last few years, CAE has a lot to be desired in terms of manipulating and partitioning imported data. Meshing is also still a bit ropy.

I stayed away from it to be honest because most of my models used keywords that weren't supported until the more recent releases.

Just my £0.02

Martin

 

[johnhors]

Having been to a recent Abaqus users conference, it soon became apparent that CAE was used predominantly by new users and students, long established users of Abaqus tended to use either Patran, Hypermesh or Cadfix, who had tried CAE but much preferred the other 3rd. party softwares.

There is also the question of what becomes of CAE , following the takeover by Dassault Systemes and their talk of "Simulia" what ever form that takes , "Catia V5 LITE" ?

 

[Yoman]

Cae is very easy to learn. only take one or 2 days to learn.
but it have one big disadvanage compared to other preprocesser which they do not allow you to control the node numbers and node location as good as others.

To the problem of the input files. I find it they are easy to follow if everythings have been defined as set, so you will have the set name instead of the pick_xxx in the history section.

 

[gurmeet2003]

ThomasH,

I have both ABAQUS CAE and Hypermesh. I have used ABAQUS for a few months. So by Johnhors definition I will qualify as a new user. But previously I have used ANSYS for a number of years. I attended training courses on Hypermesh and spent lot of effort to try and learn Hypermesh. But I found it really hard to work with.

Most of my models are solid 3D models (no shells). I found ABAQUS CAE to be much easier and quite capable of solving my problems. I have gathered that Hypermesh is popular in auto industry due to it's ability to model shells (in auto body etc.). I am not sure that Hypermesh offers any advantage for 3D models. Infact it's complexity only seems to get in the way.

Thanks,

Gurmeet

 

[GeoSmith]

Yoman,

What do you mean to control the node numbers and node locations in the geometry? As I remember (I haven't used for one year), you can seed the edge of the geometry and control the location of the nodes that you want when auto-meshing. You can divide the number of the segment in the edge of the geometry.