Simulation Mechanical vs Pre-installed Simulation

[Anonymous]

Dear Users/Administrators,

Does anyone know whether purchasing a liscense for Simulation Mechanical is significantly advantageous as compared to sticking with the already pre-installed Simulation in Inventor? I am a new employee to a company that briefly uses the Inventor simulation, but focuses more with RISA for all structure analyses. I have taken several simulation courses in college, but with SolidWorks and therefore am unfamiliar with Inventor's sister FEA options. I feel if my fellow coworkers saw the advantages of using an Inventor based FEA in conjunction with their RISA analysis, they would hop on board. So tell me, is it worth it to upgrade to Simulation Mechanical?

Sincerely,

Average Joe

[JDMather]

What type of analysis do you need to do?

You might also check out NASTRAN InCAD.  (will run directly in Inventor)

You can get both as 30-day trial to test out.

[blair · Accepted solution]

I've been using Sim-Mech before it was part of ADSK, so for me it's been my GoTo for most work. I do a lot of Hydrostatic loading and Non-Linear work which isn't available in Inventor.

The ability to patch and work with surfaces in Sim-Mech to get around bad meshes helps alot as well. I do alot of Mid-Plane meshings of thin-wall members which is much faster than working with the solid. This cuts down my design time by being able to grind out some quick FEA analysis.

That said, over the last number of years the gains/improvements that ADSK has made to Inventor in the FEA side, it's getting harder each year to renew the subscription for Sim-Mech. The first FEA in Inventor was limited to IPT files only, so major improvements/additions have be made over the releases.

I guess running the 30 day trials would be a good place to start. If you have a number of machines at your workplace, install it "stand-a-lone" and run it for 30 days on each machine. Six machines will give you half a year of trials.