I had a presentation by MSC back in 2008, so it might have changed since then. Sim designer aims at the designers that want to have a quick look at the stresses. And I quote MSC here :" If you want to make a full FEM stress analysis, don't use sim desigenr but Patran/Nastran." Here some points I had noted regarding Sim Designer.
It has Catia Meshing capabilities (quite poor). It actually creates a input deck based on the modelisation of Catia, but a lot of "card" are not transferred, such as rigid contact. You can export a bdf file, but cannot read it.
THe sensor used by Catia V5 is not supporter by MSC Designer.
Follow force is possible. It cannot do explicit solution. Sim Designer can be used to performed a non-linear implicit analysis, but the contacts needs to be manually implement in Nastran way.
Like I said, that was back in 2008, it might have changed. I would personnaly suggest Abaqus for Catia V5 if you are looking at a stress analysis tool inside Catia V5 because they both are owned by dassault system, so it make more sense.
I am interested on Simdesigner Motion to study kinematics and dynamic forces as MD Adams, NOT FEA.
To do this directely in Catia is very interesting.
Someone use this?
Marco
