Question about Abaqus

[gardoggie]

I am new to the forums, and am trying to figure out what FEA package to learn. I am thinking about starting my own one man consulting firm to do structural/machine parts FEA. I am an old engineer that wants to do this as a semi-retirement type of thing to bring in some monthly income. I learned FEA years ago and the packages I knew about have changed from back then. I haven't done FEA in a while.

I have looked through the other posts and don't want to rehash what FEA package is "best" as I know everyone has a different opinion. It appears that Abaqus is definitely a good package, but expensive. I thought I would take a different approach to a general question and ask what types of problems Abaqus would not be good to use for. What are Abaqus's weakneses?

Thanks for any help on this...

 

[xerf]

I think the only weakness is that it is expensive.

Most likely, you will not be interested in using all the capabilities it has.

 

[frabissio]

Take a look on ADINA. Not so expensive, pretty powerfull for mechanical problems (plasticity, metal forming, etc)

 

[rm2]

Please take a look to this page:

http://www.csc.fi/english/pages/elmer

it looks very interesting, I have not use it yet.

regards