Paul,
Only rarely have I had anything to offer in the conversation here that I
was sure had value.  I eagerly follow the discussion, but I have learned
that, just as I am composing a response to some query, I see arriving on
my screen a solution well-grounded in expertise.  Humility is not a high
price to pay for such good company, but I do wish I had more to offer.

I am similarly challenged when it comes to engineering problems; I know
enough to appreciate basic analysis of a mechanical question, but find I
can spend many hours trying to understand some simple bracket I thought
to fabricate.  Life is too short for my slow search.  I usually over
build everything, producing objects that look ready for nuclear
holocaust.  In your world, they would not fly.

I have not forgotten the thrill of getting a CAD grasp on the third
dimension.  Suddenly I was building models, not drawings.  I could fit
things together, refining my designs even beyond my imagining.  I knew
how it was that my cars of the early 1970s suddenly had no empty space
under the hood.  Not necessarily a good idea, but stunning to see so
much in mutual fit.

I am old enough to remember when it became the norm to use the "brute
force" calculation of computers to find integrals and other quantitative
answers where no simple formula was known.  And I have looked in envy at
those rainbow displays of stress and flow through the designs of others,
wishing I could command the power of such software.  With only a modest
idea of the needed result, I could see that I had approached the right
question.  Maybe not the best design, but I would see performance in
much the same way I had once seen fit.

CAD programs reached my price range long ago, but element and fluid
analysis has stubbornly remained out of reach.  I keep checking, looking
for some low-cost, high-powered add-on to extend one of  the CAD
packages.  This last year, I ran across a Linux open-source based
approach.  I saw the possibility of exploring this and balancing my debt
to the Rotary Engine community by reporting back.  But I have a chronic
problem with my clock; there never seem to be enough hours in the day.
I am trying to extract myself from my business and even find the same
problem there.

So it is back to modesty: I will just call attention to my discovery and
hope someone here will find it of value.  It would not surprise me to
learn this had already been explored here, but I have not yet seen it.
Judging from associated dates, CAELinux has been alive for some years
now and seems to have remained contemporary.

See http://caelinux.com/CMS/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

~ Grant