FEA Software Testing Engineer - Opinions

[jacksonfem]

Hi everybody!

I 'm a civil (structural) engineer. I have an oppurtinity to work for a company which develops a FEA software (pre/post processor and solver), as a Software Testing Engineer.
I 've read many things for this job in the internet, but nothing had to do with a FEA software. All the opinions and articles I read, refered to other kinds of softwares.
Does anybody know how exactly this job is apply to a FEA software. I 'm afraid of a boring and monotonous occupation (as several say). FEA is my passion( modeling complex things, nonlinear dynamics analysis, contact elements etc), but I don 't really want to work for a FEA company and do nothing of the things I like, but just perform boring and repeatitive tests.
I want to model, analyze, critisize the results etc.

Any opinion would be very helpful for me!

 

[IRstuff]

Software Testing should be the same for most applications; the goal is generally to verify that the software in question complies with its requirements. While there may be some actual engineering, I would think it to be a rare event. Something along the lines of Software Validation or Verification might be more apropos to your desires, although, again, the goal of the job is to get the software functional for production, not for engineering, per se. As you should already suspect, a software company does software; the engineering application is incidental. For an established company, the validation of the algorithms should have already been done.

TTFN
faq731-376
Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529


Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
There is a homework forum hosted by engineering.com:

http://www.engineering.com/AskForum/aff/32.aspx

 

[jacksonfem]

I understand...and because my country does not have any heavy industry (no automotive, no aerospace, no defence, machinery, nothing at all)...I assumed that it would be very difficult to find a company to work with an advanced FEA software...I just use SOFiSTiK for structural engineering...and Nastran just for my pleasure...not for work.

 

[IRstuff]

Sort of odd, that. One would think that the FEA software company would have some local source of math and algorithm expertise, particularly when it comes to validating the predictions and analyses made by the software, as well as testing/debugging the software for different test cases. My background is EE, so there are, or were, idiosyncratic test cases that would case some simulation programs to diverge and crash, and unless the user was solidly up on the loop equations, the user might be tempted to think that it was user error, as opposed to sensitivity to indeterminate conditions.

TTFN
faq731-376
Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529


Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
There is a homework forum hosted by engineering.com:

http://www.engineering.com/AskForum/aff/32.aspx