1. Home
  2. Solidworks CAD Design software
  3. which fem?

which fem?

i've heard of a... ehm... "custom" (?) version of cosmos for solidworks. i believe it to be called cosmosworks, but i've never seen it working, then i don't know how good it is. do any of you use it? is it simple to use? i mean that the old versions --seen in eureka! or microstation-- of cosmos required you to be an expert mechanical engineer [1] to use it and wasn't very user friendly --the fem didn't let you specify absolute coordinates for forces applied to the part/assembly but you had to "build" small solid references on the parts--. i believe it improved a lot its user interface and ease of use, but would like to hear something from its users.

there's a company offering us design space, for something around

11.800 euros/year + 20% VAT. since it's a *big* sum, i'd like to know if any of you think this is a very good package. i still have to ask for cosmosworks price.

cheers,

[1] i know you need to know exactly how things works and need to have some skills in mechanics to use fem, but older cosmos *really* needed too much...
Reply to
Gianni Rondinini
Loading thread data ...

Gianni Rondinini wrote: Have a look at DesignStar. You can find information at

formatting link
It integrates nicely with SW, has a SW like interface and doesn't have the issues CosmosWorks has.

Reply to
kellnerp

Are you running SW03 or SW04? If so, you can try out CosmosXpress, which is a stripped down version of CosmosWorks.

We've been looking at FEA packages here and one of us spent quite a bit of time recently trying out demo versions. His take on CosmosWorks was that it was easy to use but doesn't have much capability, meaning that we would have to go to CosmosM and/or DesignStar, which weren't as easy to use. He was also unimpressed with the mesher and the technical help. Another downside is that SW is tied up while it solves.

He preferred NE/Nastran to Cosmos, as it seemed more stable and had good capability for a reasonable price. The mesher was better, but still had trouble on some of our "swoopy" parts. Technical help wasn't very good (although others in this group have commented on their good technical service).

His favorite was Ansys, primarily due to its stability, the robust mesher, and the excellent technical service. The Workbench interface is intuitive, easy to use, and reads SW files, but you have to use the Classic interface to do nonlinear materials, which is not so easy to use. It's more expensive than the others for the same capability.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems

Reply to
Jerry Steiger

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.