More experience and future of CAE

[Zsatika]

Hi everybody,
I need some advise.
I am CAE simulation engineer in automotive field working in a small office of a international consulting company. I do strength simulation in ABAQUS and some NVH topics in NASTRAN and I have almost 4 years experince, since covid started i do home office and i work very independently, directly with client (I receive the information, I do the simulation/report and I present the results). Everybody tells me I am a fast learner, I pick up new things quickly, but still I feel that I miss a more expereinced colleague (7-10 years experince) from who I could learn , to discuss some more difficult topics, convergence issues, etc.Our office and team is small I dont have a this kind of colleage, all I know I have learned in my previous job and my company not really offers courses or opportunities to work on other topics like fatigue or optimization and there are no other companies in my surrounding.

Is there a posibility to find freelance jobs in this field or totaly remote jobs?
Are online courses helping in this case, courses like NAFEMS? Do companies appreciate this kind of courses?
And what is the future of this CAE simulation? I am affraid that strength simulations will not be so in demand in the future due to optimization or generative design.
What will be more popular in the next years in this field like (5-10 yeras)?

Thanks for your help and have a wonderful day!

 

[AndresBM]

Hi Zsatika,

I just found your post, thanks for sharing. I felt identified with your story when a couple of years ago I was working in a small engineering consulting office, where I had been for over five years. This company did offer doing courses and there was some new projects from time to time. However, in the everyday work I missed the deep technical discussions with experienced colleagues (the team was also small, and I did mmany things on my own). The job was good, but the work a bit repetitive, besides I felt that I would be stalled and in the next few years nothing was going to change, so I quit my job.

The plas was to work for myself with some ideas for automation of simulations that would be interesting for some customers. That was difficult to implemented, so I took a part-time job for a Dassault Systèmes reseller company (I was doing that kind of job before too), that left me enough time to do things on my own and work on interesting projects while giving me some financial security.

Doing jobs as freelencer is hard, at least at me at the beginning, but with effort you get to find some clients. Nevertheless in a few months an opportunity came and I started a partnership to create a start-up with a new product. That was and still is being very exciting but very hard.

Conclusion? I lost my stability two years ago when I quit that job, but I have learned a lot, it's been a very exciting time, and it's thrilling going to work everyday. I don't know exactly how it will develop in the next years or even months, but in any case I will be working with product development and simulation, and partially at least working for myself.

I also got some ideas for more complex simulations that would attract more clients. Doing the same as everybody is hard, and that might be the case of strength simulations, but there are many things to learn and possibilites. I see coupled CFD-FEM analysis wiht moving parts as very promising, for example, but in any case I am pretty sure there will be a lot of work for any CAE engineer.

Feel free to share how it is going.

Andrés

annelysis GmbH | Engineering Excellence |

https://annelysis.com

 

[DominicLee]

As for me would be better to try your power in b2b sales.