Solidworks Simulation Pros & Cons 1

[bduff]

I am pushing to have a few seats of Solidworks Simulation Professional purchased for my engineering group. I would like to hear your experience with the software. What problems have you run into? Would you reccomend it to a new user? I have used Solidworks for years so the user interface should not be an issue. I have been to a 1/2 day introductory training session on Simulation and it looked great from the surface. I just don't want to push for a few seats only to find out it doesn't meet my expectations.

Your experiences or reccomendations would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks
bduff, PE

 

[TheTick]

The software itself is simple enough to learn. Invest in enough in training to get users on their feet. Then invest more into ensuring analysts are fully schooled on understanding analysis: material properties, failure modes, base analysis techniques.

 

[ctopher]

I agree with TheTick. Get some training. You will learn little tricks to make your life easier.

Chris, CSWA
SolidWorks 14
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[bduff]

Thanks, definitely planning on going to a training class when we purchase the software.

 

[JMirisola]

Depending on how many seats of SolidWorks you already have, and the type of analysis you need to do, you might want to consider switching to a network license server and just upgrade some of your seats to SolidWorks Premium. If you actually need to do advanced analysis, thereby requiring one of the advanced simulation packages, you should still consider networking the seat(s). Unless you have dedicated analysis engineers who will be using the software all day, every day, it makes more fiscal sense to be able to share a couple of seats versus having dedicated seats.


Jeff Mirisola, CSWE
My Blog

 

[GRF]

The training that is based on the Solidworks manuals teaches you how to use the software not how to simulate. You need to make sure that the people going to the classes learn about how to simulate. That means what type of parameters to use and when to use them not just how add constraints to a simulation.

I have had pretty good luck with it. I have used it for analysis crushing of product and screw torque breaking a plastic tab. It has been about 4 years since I used the drop test module last but I would not trust the software to tell you if something is going to come apart. It use to not handle large displacements so a drastic change in geometry, either part crumbling or a part breaking off will crash the software.

If you plan on doing any thermal simulation the Simulation Professional will require you to run multiple iterations to get an accurate value. You have to keep changing the bulk temperature and rerunning the simulation until your temperatures converge. Flowsimulation does that all for you and the simulations are easier to set up and the meshing is much easier because it is a finite volume analysis instead of a finite element analysis.

Other than that I have done some buckling and some other static stress analysis with it with good results over the years.

I would definitely advise to get a network license that way you can share the simulation software will more team members. We have one license we share between 4 users. We have to flowsimulations we share as well and it is definitely less expensive than all of us having access to the software. It is also faster that we each can run our own simulations instead of having 1 dedicated person who only runs simulations all day.

 

[cpretty]

A quick recommendation for Simulation is to setup a dedicated computer for running the analysis. Use Remote Desktop or similar to log in and do your analysis. Advantages are that the hardware can be optimised for analysis, the computer doesn't run any other software, the engineers machines aren't doing the analysis which interferes with their normal work. Win, Win situation.

Craig Pretty

 

[GRF]

There is a down side to the dedicated machine. You have to copy the files over to the remote machine. If you leave them on the users machine then they cannot shut down or reboot while the simulation is working. There will be a performance hit accessing files over the network or running multiple simulations on the same machine and you can easily use all the available memory. We run the simulations locally and just open another window of Solidworks or complete some work that is not related to the files used in the simulation.

 

[cpretty]

We move the files to the remote machine. As all files are on a network anyway, they must be moved as part of simulation workflow, so which PC it gets moved to is the only issue.

After a few situations with an 8 hour analysis reducing the users workload to shuffling papers as even email was too slow to use effectively we needed a better method. Running overnight is also a solution, but can be an issue if errors in simulation are encountered as days can be lost quickly.

I guess it all comes down to complexity of simulation, other tasks running and existing hardware capability.

Craig Pretty

 

[drawoh]

bduff,

On the down side, the simulation software is expensive. Your analysis will have to save money and/or add value to your stuff sufficient to cover the cost of the software.

Are you going to use the software enough to get good at it.

Are you qualified to do this analysis without the software. This is a professional issue. I have had a number of people tell me they need FEA so that they can do structural analysis. The FEA is going to provide these people, and their co-workers and managers, a warm, fuzzy feeling of confidence they should not have. Even if you are qualified, are you ready and able to restrict access to the software to all but other qualified people.

An alternate strategy is to subcontract the work to an analyst, who does this stuff full time.

I am not telling you to not do this. I am just asking questions.

--
JHG

 

[waynethepain]

If you plan on using it a lot as well as the training, I would employ a contractor for 3 months or so as its so much easier with some around who can actually us it.

Cheers,
Wayne.

 

[prabusiliwangi]

Solidworks become too heavy when you use it as Testing/ Simulation. You better use another spftware like Ansys to do that. Ansys is recommended for testing Simulation with particular burdens, barriers and loads...

Prabu Siliwangi,
'Create-Future' Engineering