Blog

We are pleased to announce the formal release of Femap Version 11.1.  This is a significant release with substantial productive functionality to make more advanced FEA easier to complete.

Here is a quick summary of Femap with NX Nastran V11.1 enhancements:

Geometry:

• Further improvements in Non-Manifold Add.  Non-manifold add is the best way to intersect / trim / connect multiple surfaces for plate assemblies, in one go.  This command has been very useful for several versions, and was improved in V11 by including a user-selectable tolerance to help with lower-precision geometry.  In V11.1, Non-Manifold Add has been made even more useful and robust, with further improvements to the effect of the user-selectable tolerance and better “sequencing” of the addition process.  In short, a wider range of geometries can be successfully added at once, with fewer (unintended) free edges in untidier geometry.
•  Solid Sweep and “Sweep Between”.  For the many users who build 3D geometry entirely within Femap, two new commands have been added to the toolkit.  The first is to sweep a surface along a curve (or chain of curves) to produce a solid.  The second is to create a solid between two “end” surfaces.  This includes simpler cases like squares to circular interpolations, through to more complex blends and morphed transformations between multi-sided surfaces.

New Command: Geometry | Solid | Sweep Between.

• Measuring the distance and/or creating a line between the two closest or furthest points on a pair of solids.
• Mid-surfacing enhancements.  Femap with NX Nastran has a strong contingent of ANZ (and international) users in the “transportation structures” domain, where mid-surfacing of detailed thin solid assemblies is a common activity.  Femap is already good for this, but is about to get better.  The major decisions in mid-surfacing relates to whether to union many/all thin solid parts together and have Femap trim, extend and cleanup automatically, or to leave the parts separate and extend / trim / cleanup the mid-surfaces manually.  This is often influenced by the tidiness and cleanliness (lack of extraneous details) of the automated result.  Version 11.1 improves the intelligence of the automated mid-surfacing, so that a wider range of detailed possibilities produce cleaner automated results, particularly when there are angled junctions and/or intersections with curved/sculpted surfaces.

Cleaner auto mid-surfaces.

• Surface from Mesh – more complex geometry can be converted into a surface in one go.

Meshing Enhancements:

• Meshing Toolbox adds user-control of pad/washer alignment; new functionality includes edge-to-edge splits of surfaces via closest points (with auto update of mesh).
• The auto-tetrahedral mesher enables better control of the number of tet elements through the thickness of thinner solids.  It also improves the default quality of the tetrahedral mesh by reducing the likelihood of producing “near-flat” tet elements on the surface of the geometry.

Model Management:

• FE Model Merge – This is particularly useful in the aero industry where combining analysis models from multiple sources is common practice.  The purpose of these enhancements is to provide more granular control over the way in which multiple FE meshes are incorporated into a single model.  Of most significance is the ability to individually control entity renumbering based on the entity type, as well as transform the incoming data from one location/orientation to another during merge.
• Spreadsheet style control of Load Set Combinations.

  Easier management of Load Set combinations.

• Entity count indicator in the Model Info Tree.

Graphics:

• Further enhancements to graphics performance by extending GPU usage and reducing memory load, via OpenGL 4.2

Miscellaneous

Other miscellaneous niceties include:

• Load summation at the Definition level as well as the Set level;
• Large performance improvement for writing Nastran models with many thousands of element loads from a geometry load definition;
• Improvements in design optimization for natural frequency and mode tracking;
• RMS Von Mises Stress output for Random Analysis;
• Import support of Nastran pyramid element;
• Result vs result charting

If you have any questions about V11.1, please give us a call.