Abaqus Vs. Marc

[SergioRebollo]

Hello everybody,

I suppose this is a typical question and maybe it has already been answered.
Making a comparation between Abaqus and its competitor MSC.Marc, what are the advantages and disadvantages of each one? What kind of problems are better solved with Abaqus than Marc and when is better Marc?

I'll be waiting your posts. Thank you.

 

[gurmeet2003]

Sergio,

I think that this question has probably been discussed before. Instead of asking the question: what problems are solved better by Marc or Abaqus, I think a more appropriate question would be what kind of problems you intend to solve.
I use ABAQUS and ABAQUS CAE for both linear and non-linear
work. I am happy with both the product and the excellent technical support.

Gurmeet
support

 

[Cansand]

Gurmeet, are you wroking with ABAQUS if yes..
Does ABAQUS offer technical support. My understanding is that You have to buy it : minimum # of hours 10 for $1000
and if you are outside US $1100. Please Correct me If I am wrong

 

[bassmanjax]

I certainly don't work for ABAQUS and given that we pay a lot of money to lease the licenses in the UK, we get excellent tech support - far better than our CAD support I might add in terms of value for money...

Also, (in the UK) our tech support is included in the cost of the annual license payment, so there is no hourly limit on support as far as I know.

As regards MARC, I remember (at a previous employer) that we looked at MARC for doing forging and rolling simulation of steel which ABAQUS was quite weak on at the time, although this was 10 or so years ago.

gurmeet2003 is correct in that the OP needs to determine what sort of problems need to be solved and which solver will be appropriate. I'm sure that both MSC and ABAQUS would be glad to benchmark some sample models for comparison.

Regards

Martin

 

[bassmanjax]

Also, check out this thread regarding MSC;

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=176170&page=1

Regards

Martin

 

[johnhors]

I had trial of Marc with their pre and post processor Mentat some 15 years or so ago on a HPUX machine (good in its day!), before MSC got involved. I was put off by Marc producing non-linear solutions that had quite clearly failed to converge correctly and with no obvious warning message being given. But that was then, I recently re-gained access to Marc/Mentat via MSC's token system and was staggered to find that Mentat hadn't appeared to have changed ! Now running under MS windows, Mentat had none of the native windows functionality or accepted windows conventions (well at least that I could see) and was a pretty ropey unix to windows migration.

Compare that migration to the magnificent job Dassault Systemes made in jumping from Catia V4 (native to unix) to Catia V5 (native to windows although there is by all accounts an inferior unix version as well)

May be I spent too little time checking it out, but all I got was a nostalgia trip with MSC/Mentat !

 

[SergioRebollo]

Thank you for your points of view.

Right now, the problems we want to resolve are "general" non-lineal problems (great displacement, contacts and maybe heat and material non-linearities), not too complex problems like crack-growth with laminates and so on.
I suppose that for non-complex models, both Abaqus and Marc will work good, but I am interested in the "limits" of each program.
As I can see reading differents Forums, it seems that Marc is better dealing with contact problems and doesn't have as many problems with convergence as Abaqus. What is your opinion?

Regards

 

[Yoman228]

If both works well for the kind of works you need, then either will be fine, so I believe your final decision should be based on cost, which software your client preferred, and most importantly, how easy to employ the specialist that do the analysis.
As I am aware, ABAQUS could be the fastest growing high end FEA package. As more and more Aero and sub sea industry move into it now.
In term of ANAQUS support, their market team clamed that half of your license fee is for Product support. In UK they used to be very good and give very good advice. However, I believed those day is gone as a couple of friendly supports personal have gone from the company. I have tried to ask a few questions in recent months. The answer I got from them is usually a referral of the ABAQUS section (big section).
So, if your question can be found in Manual, they just refer you to the section, if the answer can not be found in Manual. I do not think they know how to answer it.
That is why you see me in this forum as I find the support here is better then the CURRENT Support team.

 

[johnsmith2]

Yoman228,

I am the user of abaqus in US. I find their technical support being good and reply in a short time. But I find usually, for engineering problem, they cannot answer very well. You cannot expect them to answer how to apply the boundary conditions in engineering problems. But for the ability of the abaqus and how to use certain functions and commands, they know it.