Autodesk Simulation Mechanical 2018 - What's New?

[andrewdroth]

Autodesk Simulation Mechanical 2018 is availible for download, is there a what's new document kicking around?

[John_Holtz]

Hi everyone,

The 2018 documentation, including the "What's New", has been placed on the internet. Looks like Google and the other indexes have not found it yet because the documentation is "hot off of the presses".

Simulation Mechanical 2018 What's New

[andrewdroth]

I'll save everyone a click.

There is nothing new.

[AndrewWeighell7348]

It does not seem like "What's New".  It is more "What's Taken Out".  Why has Sim Studio Tools been taken out?  Sim Studio is a brilliant tool.

On the upside, at least one can export shell models from Sim Studio 2016 R2 as sat files.  I am not overly concerned with bi-directionality.  I found pushing models back and forth between Sim Studio and Sim Mech to be a bit flaky even with modest models and a reasonable spec 32 GB PC.  I had more than one hang.

I assume that the only people using 2018 will be those with 2017 and Sim Studio 2016 R2.

Maybe it was not worth the effort making the Sim Studio interface work given the impending demise of Sim Mech?

I hope Autodesk are not going to follow PTC's debacle of replacing their very well established flagship Mathcad with a totally inferior product.  Unless I have missed something, the end of Sim Mech has been announced and new sales stopped before an equivalent product has been put in place.  Are all the features of Sim Mech going to be transferred into Fusion 360 in a last minute rush or is Sim Mech just going to be just dropped?

[andrewdroth]

These are my concerns as well.

I think it's safe to say development of Sim Mech stopped with the 2017 release. 

Hopefully that attention was put towards a seamless transition to something comparable or better. 

[Anonymous]

Can't believe they ripped out Sim Studio ... why not just leave it in until they mothball it?

Now, I have no way to update geometry and still retain the simulation setup.

I use SpaceClaim for geometry prep.  The Sim Mechanical launcher no longer works (but CFD does), so I just export as a .step to get it into Sim Mech.

When I want to make a geometry change after I have run a model, I just used the Edit:Sim Studio tool to achieve that and still retain all settings.  Just did it a few days ago on a nonlinear forming die and it worked great.