Why do you like Femap? 5

[ZeroExperience]

Perhaps you like Ansys or hypermesh?

 

[SteveMills]

I should add to my prior post that at least the NX support of FEMAP is far superior to MSC. MSC has virtually no user support. The only period that we actually got assistance from MSC was during a period that we evaluated NEI. After the evaluation, they completely dropped us and never returned phone calls nor email thereafter. Additionally, MSC frequently contacted and badgered our management during the evaluation.

Siemens (NX) has provided outstanding support. I have contacted them several times and have no complaints. They provide quick and accurate responses to questions on FEMAP.

Note that our new-hire engineers pick up PATRAN without any support.

So just, if only, Siemens could resell PATRAN. That would be the sweet spot!

 

[trainguy]

Eng-tips

Website where engineers provide tips.

So let's go guys - let's give Steve some FEMAP tips.

Here are two:

Right click / Previous command gives you the previous command, regardless of its "depth" in menus.

F6 - Tools and View Style - Model clipping plane allows you to cut your model at a plane you define

Others?

tg

 

[cpt09135]

@SteveMills:

"Entity Info in FEMAP is almost useless. It displays the nearest element continuously. There does not appear to be a way to lock it so that the info can be copied or evaluated. PATRAN in contrast has a nice method to query an element and places it into a table for easy comparison with additionally selected elements."

Steve, you can use the Femap Selector Toolbar, and automatically add entity info to the data table, which can then be copied to Excel or other Windows programs if you like. You can also turn on the tooltips, right click, and save the tooltips on screen for documentation. Both of these features are superior to PATRAN IMHO. I've been using Patran since 1984 and find many things that work better in FEMAP.

Chris Teague
Saratech

 

[ThomasH]

@SteveMills:

Hi

I don't really understand the criticism of groups. If you use the "Model Info" tree select a property and right click you can create a group with all the elements from that property, in very few "clicks". You can also from the "Model Info" tree work directly with the groups. Or, just activate the group and than use the Group menu (pull down).

If you look at the Visibility Toolbox you can actually combine the visibility of Groups-Layers-Properties-Materials-etc . I would say it is very powerful. Is it perfect? No, but it is better them some other tool I have seen.

Does Patran even have layers? But I won't spend time criticizing Patran.

When it comes to being forced from one software to another. I sympathize and can understand the frustration.
When MSC.Nastran for Windows "died" the MSC representative considered it obvious that I should swap to MSC.FEA. It was more expensive so it was obviously better, some logic . I refused which resulted in a long discussion regarding pros and cons. The result from that evaluation (I evaluated Patran) was that Patran was neither better nor worse than Femap, only different. Today I am not sure, but the impression is that Femap evolves faster than Patran.

Anyway, I hope you find a solution that works for you.

Good Luck

Thomas

 

[Naffoussi]

Hi all,

Dear Steve,

Can you send results (forces, stress, displacement...) from Patran to excel with one mouse click ?
Can you list properties, materials and other useful informations from Patran to excel with one mouse click ?
Can you create nodes, elements, loads, constraints sets, properties... using excel (useful for large model)?
Can you change DOFs of 500000 RBE elements in one click?
Can you create, run check analysis (1g- free-free- ground check..) and get results and report in one click?
etc...
I guess no !! with femap and thanks to API programming all of this commands are possible and very USEFUL

You maybe need more training to better discover Femap and its "magics" utilities.

Best regards.

 

[EnDuraSim]

Hi all and particularly Steve Mills and Outpost11,

Sorry your exeriences with Femap are negative - it suggests the people who support or trained you don't love you enough!

The main reason Patran users don't like Femap Groups is because they use the same name, but do different things. In Femap a group is simply a collection of entities created by a set of rules (eg. by location, by association with entities, by type/colour/shape, or just picked from the screen). The idea that there is somehow a "problem" with Femap groups because they don't work the same way as in Patran is either a failure to learn or a failure to teach. If Patran still uses Lists as its method to collect entities (eg. by association), then by first-hand experience I can say that Femap's method of doing that on-the-fly (via the Methods button in the Entity Selection dialog) is way ahead of Patran. Perhaps MSC have finally fixed that archaic ergonomics by now.

SteveMills - your company must have a peculiar set of FEA activities that make Patran seemingly superior to Femap. On the other hand, we have in Australia a large group of commercial organisations whose experience and purchase decisions don't reflect that. These are people who used Patran for years and chose to change to Femap: eg. BlueScope Steel, BHP Billiton, QR National, Revolution Design and quite a number of small companies for whom cost-effective efficiency is paramount. The ones who don't make the switch are typically constrained by very long product lifecycles (must preserve legacy system), or have clients (like Boeing) who demand a specific FEA platform. Without those constraints, the evidence is clear that companies are voting with their feet - and confirmed by MSC's mediocre financial performance over the last decade, compared to its peers. Which is a pity, because a strong Nastran community is important, and MSC did quite a thorough job of weakening that. We do not have one single instance here where a company who originally started with Femap has simply "chosen" to "upgrade" to Patran. But there are many cases in the reverse.

What exactly is the problem with creating loads and load definitions in Femap? What Load(s), Load Cases, Load Combinations or Subcoms can I not create in Femap that can be created in Patran? I don't know of any.

Femap has been able to report lengths and areas of elements for at least 15 years, and has been able to do it faster than Patran for at least 10 of those. It is an automatic by-product of Tools | Mass Properties | Mesh Properties (as summation and/or individually). It can also be done via the Selector Toolbar and the Data Table (there is an icon to add element "mass" properties). Again, your support is either useless, or you are not asking the questions - and that's a little sad after using it for 4 years.

Reviewing someone else's model is very simple in Femap. Switch on the highlighter in the (expanded) Model Info tree and click on the relevant entities. Right click and edit as required.
And don't get us started on double-sided plate contours, free-body diagrams, bending moment diagrams, interface loads, results enveloping, full beam cross-section results, layup visualisation (etc. etc). These are things Patran either doesn't have at all, or doesn't do very well, or needs an extra cost option to achieve. Checking models is "easier" in Patran ONLY because it is what you are familiar with.

Like most help systems, Femap's requires some knowledge of what to look for. They slightly broke the help in Femap V11.0 (search functionality), but fixed it again in V11.0.1. Otherwise, Patran's help must have been completely transformed recently if it has any merit compared to Femap. However, make sure your Internet Explorer security settings are set to "Allow active content to run in files on My Computer", otherwise the superb context sensitivity of Femap's help is hobbled.

Not using the middle mouse button for rotating the model is the strangest criticsm I have heard. Firstly, it is identical to Patran's default installation and secondly if you have no use for rotating the model, that makes your use of FEA unique. If you don't like using the middle mouse button to rotate the model, then get yourself a spaceall or 3Dconnexion.

Your criticism of what you cannot check in Femap while doing something else has some merit, but were/are you using Patran on Linux or Unix? There are some inherent differences in what can be done with Windows compared to (eg) XWindows, and sometimes simultaneous access multi-window has some limited benefits. The claim that Femap was created "by some IT dude with no understanding of FE" is a bold call and simply does not reflect reality - and again suggests an issue with teaching or learning.

I will agree that the Entity Info panel is useless (to us), in that we use that screen real estate for stuff that we find more valuable.

But... your work is only easier in Patran because you are experienced with that, and at a beginner level in Femap. Sorry to say it will remain that way unless you choose to get better help, or put effort into the learning.