Nastran or ABAQUS for structural implicit & explicit 1

[YK119]

My company is looking for CAE to be implemented in our R&D department. We've talked to software companies and now I want to hear from the users for their feedback.
I had experience with ANSYS WB & ABAQUS CAE. I personally prefer ABAQUS due to its strength in explicit & GUI. For Nastran code, we have NX and MSC and we do not want to just listen and trust the sales guys 100%. And I'm not going to consider ANSYS WB.

MSC claimed that FEMAP is a toy. But I want to hear from the users. How about PATRAN? Is PATRAN as good as ABAQUS CAE?
My work will involve explicit dynamic. Is DYTRAN as good as LS-DYNA & ABAQUS/EXPLICIT? MSC has Marc. I'm even more confused.
Anyone experienced technical support from both companies?

Thanks

YK

 

[ThomasH]

Hi

Interesting that MSC calls Femap a toy. I never heard that when they still had the right to sell Femap bundled with MSC.Nastran and called the product Nastran for Windows. The "toy" label came when they lost the right to sell Femap.

I played a bit with ABAQUS/CAE and I was not very impressed. I think Femap is significantly stronger when it comes to modelling. But I have spent several years in Femap and a few hours in CAE so the comparison is not really fair. I know people who have access to both CAE and Hypermesh and claim that they use Hypermesh for the tougher assignments.

I would test both Femap and Patran. Personally, I would not swap from Femap to Patran but that is another story.

As for solver, Marc is implicit and I think you can access LS-Dyna from inside MSC through SOL700 (solution sequence 700). That is the idea behind MD Nastran (MD = Multi Discipline).I can't really compare Dytran, LS-Dyna and ABAQUS. Another option might also be NEiExplicit (NEiSoftware) or Adina which is the explicit option in NX (SOL701, I think). It depends on your applications and perhaps also on budget. One difference between the solvers are the available material libraries. Some are huge, others are more limited.

Again, I would test before a make any final decision.

Good Luck

Thomas