Most people I know prefer ABAQUS for nonlinear analysis.
I find the geometry tools in ANSYS cumbersome, so if you have to create geometry in it I would not recommend it. The solid meshing utilities are nice. Many people who perform dynamic analyses prefer ANSYS.
NASTRAN SOL 106 is fine for...
If mesh density is an issue with tet elements, CATIA has a utility called "adaptivity" which will iterate your mesh. You can use global adaptivity to set error objectives, and local adaptivity to apply local areas such as box groups. This saves you the trouble of manually iterating.
The icon...
NicSte,
The CATIA FEM utilities support both solid and surface meshes, as well as beam elements. What options are available depends on your licensing. You may be limited to only solid tet meshes. Which type of mesh is appropriate depends on many factors such as geometry.
I highly...
