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Validation of onshape simulation results
owen_jones770
Member Posts: 2 ✭
Hi, I've just been beginning to explore Onshape's simulation tools, and I'm unsure how I can be expected to trust them. My background with FEA is using ANSYS mechanical and solidworks, and while obviously onshape is not trying to replicate ansys, it fills the same gap as solidworks fea.
However, in both of those other tools you can see the mesh and its stats, which allows me to conduct a mesh independence study. Without that I can't see how this tool is any more than a bunch of pretty colours, but I'd love to be proven wrong as it's integrated really nicely into the software.
Comments
FWIW, at one point at a former company we did some side-by-side comparisons with some complex castings and got similar results to Ansys. Color plots and max stress were very similar. The biggest challenges are in getting the constraints to do what you intend.
Simon Gatrall | Staff Mechanical Engineer | Carbon, Inc.
I don't trust any of them.
I do like this one because it's easy to setup and keep running as the design matures. I do a lot of analysis and I validate every prototype along the way to see were I'm at making sure the analysis is converging with reality.
There's really no documentation, so we're guessing what going on. I believe it's a standard tetrahedral mesher with geometry and stress adaptors turned on. It's pretty good for most things I'm doing.
It's missing shell elements and your analysis will suffer if you try and analyze a thin. They're working on it.
I'm like you, I always want to see the mesh. Validating makes me feel better.