Ansys mechanical (static structural) vs mechanical ADPL 1

You what to know the difference between Workbench Mechanical and Mechanical APLD? Well the solver is basically the same but the big difference is that workbench is more user friendly , and has a better connection with CAD.
Workbench Mechanical is perfectly capable of doing complex beam analsysis.

I'd recommend that you consider spending some time learning Ansys APDL... the tutorials in the help file are really great and a beam model would be a great opportunity to cut your teeth in APDL. Try and do the tutorials without using GUI to get a feel for the Ansys Parametric Design Language.

As was mentioned earlier, Ansys Workbench Mechanical is most likely completely capable of solving your beam problem. However, some time in the future, you'll probably be faced with a bigger, uglier problem, which uses features that aren't available in the Ansys Workbench GUI, requires you to manipulate the model on the fly, or requires post-processing that is extremely difficult in Workbench. Ansys APDL may be a more difficult interface to learn, but it is also a more powerful way of accessing advanced features in ANSYS and manipulating FE models. Also, once you know APDL, you can take full advantage of the Workbench interface using APDL command snippets, etc.

As far as importing goes, it may be easier (and a good exercise) to build your model with keypoints using APDL if it isn't too big. But, you can certainly bring your CAD files into DesignModeler, manipulate it as necessary, and then bring them into Ansys APDL from there.

Good luck.

can anybody clearly define the procedure to bring FEA models from ANSYS classic to workbench and vica versa ... from FEA i mean mesh and loads .. because i like meshing in classic more powerful than workbench ..

In WB you can have it create a file of line mode commands, so you would then have an APDL batch file. I don't know how to go the other way and I'm not sure there would be any benefit. The advantage of WB is a slicker connection to your CAD files. But once you make changes to the model in APDL, I don't think you would maintain that connection. Many people start in WB for pre-processing of geometry and loads, then move to APDL to take advantage of more solver options and continue with post-processing. You won't have the automatic report generation of WB, but you probably already have old reports to use as templates anyway.

adding to what others said, workbench also has a great capability in analyzing coupled field problems, it is only possible in workbench that you can solve fluid problems in fluent and link it with static structural analysis. moreover, some analyses like fatigue analysis is only possible in workbench to get great contours. workbench has powerful tools like FE Modeler to manipulate your model. it is possible to solve a parametric problem easily in workbench. workbench can be linked with other softwares like Excel. constraints, material properties and named selections are automatically recognized in workbench when importing from a cad modeler. taking these advantages of workbench into account one can say that workbench specially version 13 of it, is the most powerful finite element software that can be used by industry men.

Engineering Softwares Company

omidomidi,
I completely agree Workbench is a good platform (esp. v13). Though, I think to realize the full potential of Workbench, users must learn APDL, and the best way to do that is by spending some time in the Classical Ansys environment.

As you mentioned, there are plenty of capabilities that are available in Workbench which are not available in Classic (a slick CAD interface, linked CFD and structural models, etc.). That said, there is quite a lot of finite element capability that is simply not (easily) accessible in Workbench (nodal or element selection, element table results, controlling element real constants and keyopts, methods of applying complex boundary conditions, sub-modelling, processing results using APDL programming, etc). For an occasional user, Workbench is great. However, serious FEA analysts tend to use the great features that have been added to Ansys over the years, yet haven't made their way into Workbench yet... some of those features will probably never have a GUI interface (I'm REALLY hoping for an eventual command line interface in Workbench).

That's the reason that I recommend that people start with the Classical Ansys interface and then move to the new GUI once they have a feel for APDL. Under the hood, they're both the same FE solver, but knowing APDL gives the user much more freedom in steering the solver to do what they want it to do.

//signed//
Christopher K. Hubley
Mechanical Engineer
Sunpower Incorporated
Athens, Ohio