Hi,

I had the opportunity to play a little bit with SolidWorks Simulation 2014 today and I wanted to share some toughts. Here's the list of enhancements:

USER INTEFACE

• Study names

This is not documented, but when you create a new study it won't be anymore called "study1, study2, study3" and so on, but it will be named on the basis of the kind of study you select: if you choose a static study then it will be called "Static Study1", if you choose Frequency it will be called Frequency 1. This will clear off confusion when accessing SolidWorks files with many studies

• Automatic conversion of toolbox fasteners to bolts

This is absolutely amazing: it will save a lot of time, especially on flanged connections where you can have up to 20-30 bolts, ot maybe complex machines you want to simulate.

Preload and tensile stress area are automatically populated, which is something I've been requesting in a past enhancement.

• Design Study listed in the available studies you can create

Another undocumented enhancement. Design study is the new interface for the Optimization Study and Design scenario functionality. Now it is listed in the available studies you can create like in the past (2008 or so) when Optimization was listed there. It's good because some people are unaware of Optimization and Design scenario functionality, and this way they'll wonder what a design study is and possibily begin using it.

• Contact visualization plot.

This is great, you can create a plot that will whow you in a single place how parts are constrained: glued, no penetration, free, shrink fit, and so on. It will help many customers to diagnose problems when getting the "model is unstable" error message. There's a lot of depth in this new functionality: you can even check which mesh elements will participate in the contact.

MATERIALS

• Larger and richer materials library

Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp partenered with Materiality LLC to give users a wider choiche of materials with curves (e.g. Stress-Strain).

I asked for this functionality a couple of years ago for the SolidWorks World Top Ten Ideas list.

PERFORMANCE

• Initial loading of Simulation Studies

You can set an option to allow SolidWorks Simulation load only a small subset of data into memory. When activating a study all the data will be loaded into memory. This will be very useful when you have models with many studies because it will significantly descrease time to load the model when simulation add-in is activated.

• Large problem direct sparse

I'd like to test this new solver on a complex contact in a valve (seat-sphere contact) with a very dense mesh

• Better convergence for node-to-surface no-penetration contact formulation with overall performance improvement for up to 30%.
• Improved accuracy of results for shells with plasticity material models when using small displacement formulation.

NEW MULTI-PHYSICS

• Import results from SolidWorks Plastics

For plastic parts, you can import temperatures and in-mold residual stresses from SolidWorks Plastics Premium in a nonlinear static study. This is something that software like ANSYS will envy

POST PROCESSING

• Compare results across multiple configurations

This is something I've been asking for since 2009. When I do my training courses I always make this example to explain simmetry:

I have a "full" configuration of a plate with a hole, and a "simmetry" configuration. The model is fixed at both side faces, and there is a distributed uniform load on the top face. Now I can use compare results tool to show that the full model and half model both yield the same results.

• Mirror a plot respect to the plane of simmetry
  

This is absolutely cool! This is the plot of the "symmetry" configuration of the model mirrored respect to the simmetry plane.

• Light speed management of plot options
  

Now you can manage plot options in one place (the plot chart). Just right click it and you'll be able to do a lot of things: show the mesh, change the stress component, change fringe options, manually set min or max (like in Flow Simulation), create section or iso plots. This is so amazing!

There's only one thing that doesn't work: when you show the mesh on a mirrored plot it won't show it on the mirrored side, like here:

• List connectors output forces
  

You can now list all connectors forces in one place with a very smart interface.There's one thing I noticed: when you click on a row that identifies a certain connector SolidWorks Simulation shows a label listing all force and moment components. There is also a triad at the center of the connector, which I supposed should explain the X,Y,and Z directions. This is cool, because it's something I've been asking for lately. See it here:

There's only one thing that doesn't convince me:

- first, in SolidWorks convention RED is X, GREEN is Y, and BLUE is Z. In this case the green arrow is indicating the axial direction of a bolt connector, while usually Z identifies the axial direction for a bolt connector (the blue arrow therefore should show the axial direction)

- it's not showing arrows or circles to identify directions for the bending moment (maybe this is a good suggestion for a future developement of this functionality)

• Contact Pressure Plots in 2D Simplification
  

Something I've been needing when analizing gear teeth contact

Cheers,

Alex

www.solidworksacademy.blogspot.com