🚀 go-pugleaf

This is by no means a trivial question.  You must first ask the class of FEA to
be considered:
 
    1)  rough analysis for simple scaling
    2)  detailed analysis for design verification

The latter is the most typical use of FEA an basically requires a unix type
workstation or above - the memory limitations of dos usually make dos solutions
prohibitive in 3D, which what is generally required for desing verification (our
typical models are on the order of 7000 to 40,000 nodes).

You must also consider whether you plan to do general nonlinear analysis, or only
linear analysis.  A quick review of cpu cycles utilized in a facility suggests
that even if a relatively small number of analyses are nonlinear, then virtaully
all cpu cycles are being used for nonlinear analysis, and you should  design your
facility as a nonlinear facility.

It is also imperative that you have  a good mesh generator and graphical post
processor.  The difference between a good mesh generator and an ok mesh generator
is about 20X in productivity.

Finally you will  need color hardcopy capability in order to distribute your
results.
 
Typical linear codes (all of whcih work at least ok) are:
 
     ANSYS
     NASTRAN

Typical nonlinear codes are:
 
     ABAQUS
     ADINA

You might also look at Marc if it solves special needs of yours.

Commericial pre/post processors include PATRAN (I recommend rev 2.5 for now) and
SUPERTAB from SDRC.

You should also consider one of the many color postscript printers (we have
several from seiko and Tektronix).

Finally you want to get the fastest risc worklstation you can get.  We have
tested the HP9000/730, SGI R4000 based systems, and other of the new 64 bit
floating point chips.  Get yourself 2 1GB dfisc drives if you are doing this for
real.

A typical system ight cost the following (rough costs):
  
     1)  FEA program $5K - $10K year

     2)  Mesh generator $10K yr

     3)  Workstation:  $25K
 
     4)  color postscript printer $5K to $10K

This is nearly a 1/3 cost reduction and 10,000 performance improvement over the
system I put together is 1983!


-- 

Regards.
 
Don Rolph  a722756@pan.mc.ti.com WD3 MS10-13 (508)-699-1263