Simulation for all Professional licenses

GregBrown

Exciting news today - we are opening up Onshape Simulation to all Onshape Professional customers. This is coming hot on the heels of the initial launch which happened just 3 weeks ago, but of course one of the many benefits of Onshape’s agile approach is that updates and improvements can be delivered really, really fast! The other benefit unique to Onshape is that you will not have to do anything, download anything or install anything in order to see the new simulation tools in the assembly environment.

For a recap of what Onshape Simulation is and how it works, please refer to the What’s New we posted (including a video) on the release day.

https://www.onshape.com/en/resource-center/what-is-new/simulation-publications-ar-view

More information can be found at:

https://www.onshape.com/en/features/simulation

Or you can watch the webinar to see a hands on demonstration here: https://www.onshape.com/en/resource-center/events/introducing-onshape-simulation-110222 

Please check the above links out before you get started, as they contain a lot of useful information about how Onshape Simulation's superpowers can be experienced.  We've learned over the years that simulation is extremely valuable in early design decision support, when fundamental structural design directions are being made, so jump in as soon as you can!

Finally, Onshape Simulation is not your conventional FEA tool - it does work differently and leverages modern and novel capabilities. Give it a try and find out for yourself, visit the forum for best practices/advice, and send us support tickets. We’re seeing great successes with it, and look forward to you experiencing the same.

brucebartlett

Thank you, just saw it popup.  I will put it straight to work.  

fnxf

Awesome 🤩 

STEG

When "coming soon" is just 3 weeks! 

billy2

Alright, I have the perfect little project. It's a differential analysis looking to make improvements to a design (actually trying to make the best design possible). In the end, I'll have parts made and will be able to validate the design process. This is exciting! 

Alexandre_Wamain

Any possibility thermal simulations are coming soon??

NeilCooke

Alexandre_Wamain said:

Any possibility thermal simulations are coming soon??

Not anytime soon.

fnxf

One things is a bit confusing- the simulation units.

I know that it wasn't possible to beforehand read what kind of units a user has.

Would it be possible to set "Simulation units" for all documents? E.g. like this:

M_Hutchison

SIGH!  Thought I was in luck until I realized I have the Standard license ($), not Professional ($$).  Nonetheless, I found a slight bug... If I create a new Named Position, and then click Done, the Load Icons appear in the toolbar.  I pick one and I get a dialog box, but it won't let me select an Instance.  Hence its a non functional tease.  FYI

eric_pesty

I've been playing around with this a bit and I have a few thoughts and comments!

- First of all, definitely the easiest to setup and use for simple cases! The seamless integration is really nice with the "standard" tools available right there (show/hide, transparent/isolate, exploded views, sections, etc...)

- The only thing that is a bit weird with the views is the section view: it would be nice if you didn't have the "hatch" on the section as it stops you from seeing the colors on the section plane itself...

- I know it's early days but a bit more guidance on how to use the "simulation connection" options would be nice (especially for mates other than "fasten"). It seems to let you select just about any faces from any parts in your assembly but I don't think that necessarily makes sense. I was able to successfully use it to specify the "contacts" when mating two "difficult to mate parts". For example using two MCs defined in part studios and picking the faces that should be "tied" even though they didn't quite touch so that worked well!
I'm just running into a difficult situation where I can't seem to specify a fasten area without over-defining the assembly but If I don't have a mate I get a "simulation bonded" that isn't quite what I want as shown here, not sure if there's a workaround for this...



- I experienced a couple cases where it wouldn't run because "material information was missing". I'm guessing it was because some parts still used "old" versions (although I thought I had replaced/updated all of them with "current" ones and it seemed to be caused by "standard content" but I'm not 100% sure...)

- My biggest complaint right now is that it doesn't seem to "remember" the results if you browse away. It's fine for things that run quickly but I have a test example that takes ~30min to solve so it's pretty frustrating if you browse away by error and lose the results! Even if it's completed it seems like you lose everything if you refresh or whatever...

- One thing that is currently missing that could make simulating certain things difficult is the ability to specify a displacement instead of just loads. Right now it's hard to simulate something that has some clearance for assembly but gets deformed when you tighten fasteners (or a snap fit where you know how far it need to distort for example...)

- For the deformation, it would be nice if you could control it with a slider rather than just turn on/off or animate (or at least control the animation speed). It would be even better if the color display also went from no load to full load in the process.

- I also noticed that if you "print" to download an image, you can't include the top part of the screen so you get the plot and legend but not "what" is plotted or deformation state/state etc...

Martin_Krijger

I have to wait hours for the result of a simple simulation. Anyone else has this issue

S1mon

We've been experimenting with Simulation, and learning some things the hard way. The part under test here is a chassis for an electric scooter (displacement is 3X). Below are some thoughts and feedback.

1. There doesn't seem to be a way to tie a configuration of an assembly to a simulation ("configuration"?) which is defined in the table on the right. It would be really nice to do this since right now we end up with two drop downs which need to be in sync in order for our simulations to make sense. We have three generations of chassis that we're simulating, and the fixturing is the same for each, but the load needs to be different since they're different parts.
2. While it is actually documented in the help, it took a while to figure out that pin and slot mates don't work for simulation (nor do gear, rack and pinion, etc). 
3. Similarly, it's disappointing that we can't use a sketch to constrain the part under test. Instead we needed to build some dummy parts to constrain our chassis so we can isolate the chassis while loading it the way that ISO 17128 requires. The front axle is fixed, the fork can pivot around that axle, and the rear axle (and dummy axle block) can slide relative to the front axle position.
4. We were hoping that the fixture parts could be left out of the FEA, but we have three simplified parts (front fork, rear axle, rear axle block) which all need to be part of the FEA to move correctly.
5. The displacement numbers are useful, but it would be really nice to be able to measure from any point to any other point and get the deformed dimension.
6. It took a lot of trial and error to get the mates correct. There was one time when Simulation seemed to ignore the front axle mates, and the whole chassis deformed in a bizarre downward angle through the base of the test fixture.
7. Like @eric_pesty, we experience many times when Onshape seems to lose the results and needs to regenerate them.
8. When I try to show connections on my M1 Mac, Onshape loses the connection to WebGL and it fails. My co-worker can see the connections.
9. Why can't we simulate elastomers like silicone rubber? Even in a very simple compressive situation, it would be interesting to us.
10. The text boxes for the displacement multiplier and the scale limits seem really flaky. Half the time I type a number in and hit enter, and nothing happens.
11. The slider for adjusting the scale for the colors is often hard to get to move without the whole color scale legend moving.
12. Other FEA packages sometimes have a separate color for values above the upper limit, making it clear the range of acceptable values and then really clearly showing where it's over. There's no way to make this as clear here.
13. MPa is one choice for pressures in simulation, but the values in the materials library (tensile yield, etc.) are in Pascals. It would be nice to be more consistent. I'd prefer that the library values were also in the same units as the simulation, and I echo the desire for simulation defaults units.

BenTaylor

S1mon said:

When I try to show connections on my M1 Mac, Onshape loses the connection to WebGL and it fails. My co-worker can see the connections.

I've had the same issue on an M1 in Chrome and Firefox, but it works in Safari. A similar issue arises with comparing versions, and when I contacted support they confirmed it's a bug related to M1. 

billy2

I'm liking simulation because it's fast and easy use. It's a tool that can be used while designing a product trying to make it better. I tend to use analysis as an optimization tool trying to figure out is this design better than that design and hoping to develop something that is the best it can possibly be.

Below is something similar to a part I was designing for a friend. It's a nylon 12 printed part that'll get pinched into a slot and I want it hold in place:


At 7N the spring collapses small enough to fit in the slot:


I wanted the spring's deformed shape to hold against the walls of the slot and added an extra rib feature to keep the spring from destorting in the region where it comes in contact with the block.

From the bottom you can see the block & spring faces become parallel when deflected:


The yield for nylon 12 is 119MPa so I'm far enough away meaning I should be able to insert the spring into the slot many times before it takes a set. 

Now that FEA is going to be "free" and widely available, I'm hoping engineers use this tool as a differential tool and not as a validation tool. It's so easy to ask "is this part design better than that part design?".  Validating a design, especially during a design review isn't going to be easy and many will question your results.

billy2

I have a really old M1 and I can't show connections either. I then have to force quit chrome.

S1mon

I did get connections to show in Firefox on my M1 Max MacBook Pro, but it's still clearly doing something insane with the load on the GPU, as the frame rate goes to single digits, and it's barely responsive. Support is aware of this.

billy2

Good to know, thanks for the tip.