Computers back in the day, what value? 4

[ParabolicTet]

Just 30 years ago , workstations would cost millions of dollars , have less than 100 kb of RAM, and take several engineers working full time to operate and program.

My question is how on earth did large companies justify the cost of buying such expensive machines for such little return on investment. You would be limited to the most basic of analysis which you could do faster and cheaper by hand. And what basic part would be worth the multi-million dollar price tag to design it?

It seems many companys underuse FEA despite computers being so relatively cheap.

 

[GregLocock]

Hah. We used Control Data for a while. We could download and upload via our state of the art 300 baud acoustic coupler, or drive over to the local bureau, which was about 40 minutes away. My jobs were small enough to modem, but with the bigger models the drive was much much quicker.


Cheers

Greg Locock

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

 

[cbrn]

Hi,
in addition to the implicit topic of "FE-misuse" or "just-press-a-button" philosophy, please give a look at a very impressive post in the ANSYS forum...
I'm convinced that in old times, when the use of a FE system was extremely complex in itself, people dedicated to perform calculations were obliged to have a deep knowledge on what they were trying to analyze, because a single run of calculation would require enormous efforts and thus could not be "wasted" just to "give it a try and see what comes out"... That's the difference with nowadays: the significance of a FE run was enormous back in the days, but it can still be now.

Regards