FEA SW - Geometric Modelling SW for a young student?

[lnh62]

This may be absolutely crazy, but I've learned to never underestimate the abilities of kids...

My 10 year old son is involved in a structural engineering challenge (Destination Imagination) which requires that their team design a two part structure out of naturally occurring wood and glue. The approximate dimensions of the two part structure is about 4 inches square at the ends, about 7.5 to 9" tall with a total weight of less than 25 grams. The structure will be put in a test rig and loaded with weights from the top until it collapses.

They cannot use software which would auto generate a structure based on the challenge constraints. However, my reading of the rules suggests they can use CAD/analysis software to help work through designs of their own making.

At 10 years old the technical kids can be fairly sophisticated (e.g my son does fairly complex programming of robots in Labview and taught himself "C" last summer), but don't have wide ranging math skills nor anything more than an intuitive/experimental feel for physics.

Does any design/analysis software exist which can be used in a fairly simplistic way to help these kids learn and explore how different structures act under load?

 

[GregLocock]

http://www.bridgebuilder-game.com/

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[4Pipes]

This suggestion might be over the top but it sounds like your son needs some serious challenges.

The free version of Alibre is still a very workable solid modelling program. Alibre works in a similar way to SolidWorks. Anybody who is able to teach himself "C" should find Alibre pretty easy to learn. My 14 year old son learnt Albre and then went on to use SolidWorks without stopping.

When your son has his models drawn up, you could download a trial version Algor's DesignCheck. DesignCheck is very feature limited but is not size limited. Algor can direcly import Alibre files. You will can get DesignCheck from Alibre or directly from Algor. However, I would suspect that even your son might need some help. With a bit of assistance, my son found it interesting to see how things worked. You will at least get a trained Alibre / SolidWorks user you can send out to work!