Procision by Rand 3

[sheets]

I am curious to hear about any experiences, good or bad, with using Procision meshless structural analysis software. Also, if you know the price you paid, I would be interested in that too. Thanks in advance.

 

[Bkerila]

Sheets,
We have purchased two licenses of Procision in our Canadian division and were considering it for purchase to use at our US division as well. As part of the selection process we sent an Engineer to train in the S/W before spending any real $ on it. The Canadian branch hasn't really utilized it yet.
Although it's solver was faster than most comparable software that we've seen (the "meshless" feature), the set-up required to get a model which executed quickly offset any gains in the calculation time. Although you don't define a "mesh" you do have to define numerous "split planes" in the model at areas of stress concentration (and isn't that why we're using FEA in the first place?). You extrude a surface through the part and "slice" it into two sub-parts. Done correctly it increases accuracy and decreases solution time, done incorrectly it can do exactly the opposite. The process is manual, iterative, and somewhat non-intuituve. 2-D examples make it look easy, actually doing it to a 3D, complex shape is a whole different story. One casting example: 6 minutes to solve in Procision, 10 minutes in Pro/Mechanica. Set-up time in Procision - 6 hours, Pro/Mechanica - 5 minutes.
Other comments - Procision could not handle assemblies, loading and constraints were fairly typical (with the possible exception of combined loading scenarios (e.g. heat and load)), Post processing has some additional features of error tracking to aid in "split plane" definition, user interface was good. Procision is geared toward a Pro/E based solid modeling environment and is well integrated into Pro/E.
Our reviewer stated "Procision is better than no FEA at all", but this was the highest praise he could muster.

As a related aside, I've found that the $ associated with training one or two users prior to purchasing licenses for a dozen more than offsets the headaches associated with buying the wrong product. You can tell so little from the vendors canned demos, but when you sit with their instructors for a week you get a great sense of the product's capabilities and user friendliness.

Hope this helps, if you have any further questions let me know!

Bob Kerila, PE