In general I'd say south...or down (whichever you please). The fact that certain programs contain wizards to walk you through how to do an analysis just makes me shake my head.
As noted, such programs are getting easier to use, and as also noted obliquely, they are often being driven by people who lack the training to detect when such a program misbehaves.
Vendors of such software continue to absolve themselves of all responsibility for said misbehavior in their licensing agreements, and continue to sell the software on the basis of reduced labor expenses.
To be fair I have't seen anything too horrific from the heavyweight programs, but I think the trend of bundling a lightweight FEA package into CAD programs is one lawsuit away from a disaster (or vice versa).
Cheers
Greg Locock
SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
The continual dumbing down of analysis/simulation software is customer driven. If vendors don't do it they lose their customers. Most software teams have many people eager to rewrite buggy legacy code but are forced into turd polishing tasks instead.
One field I'd like to see expand is optimisation. At the moment Optistruct doesn't really do what I want (optimise structure for strength), for some reason it is much happier optimising for stiffness, which is cool, but not always what I want.
I'd also like to see improved solid automesh .
Cheers
Greg Locock
SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.