Monty Roberts wrote:

Hi Bill,

I would have sent this to you personally if I had your email. Not sure that the rest of the group wants to hear about all of this off subject engineering software stuff. I started looking for reasonably priced FEA  software and came across this company in Germany:

http://www.lisa-fet.com/indexbut.htm

You can download a fully functional version of their software for free. It is limited to 1300 nodes!! (not the usual useless 500 or so) You can buy a static mechanical version for around $900 I think. That is all I really want anyway. In my previous experience FEA is great for two things:

1. Get a good first look at new designs (a lot cheaper than prototypes, of course there should be lots of simplified hand calcs to verify and make sure you are in the ballpark. Common sense doesn't hurt either ;-)

2. Refinement of a design after you have some test data to verify your model.


I have used ANSYS in the past to do mechanical and thermal work. I know just enough about CFD to be dangerous. But I figure that with 1300 nodes I can at least do some gearbox housings, prop/drive shaft, and engine mounts and truss structure (separately of course. I don't want to get into assembly modeling anyway) Plus play around with the CFD (for that extra special pressure recovery spinner) and EMAG stuff (always have wanted to build a rail gun :-) Anyway, I'm going to play with this download when I get some time. The one drawback is that I think it only reads dxf files, and not the solid edge flavor which just happens to be the package I have. Oh well, the translation nightmare continuies.


Monty

Monty Roberts
RMI
1795 Berry St.
Fayetteville, AR 72701
tmrbrts@swbell.net

Can you get that for Linux Monty?

Paul Lamar
 
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