Nice approach for Finite Element Analysis in Rhino. The clearest tool for FEA I’ve used. Changes the game.
"Scan&Solve" Structural Analysis in Rhino - Debut Webinar on Vimeo http://www.scan-and-solve.com
Very cool tool, and reasonably priced. May have to exercise my student privileges and pick up a license. Do you have any idea how FEA tools typically handle welded structures? Assuming good penetration on your welds can you assume that the welded joint retains roughly the same strength as the parent material?
This looks like a cost effective method for some preliminary FEA analysis, but I don’t think I would be relying on this software if I had a project that required some reliable analysis.
It looks similar to what you can expect from Rhino, appears simple and easy to use, but I don’t think I would ever use Rhino to build files for production. Anytime I created files in Rhino, I would generally pass them along to an ME in Solidworks or Pro-E to finalize the mechanical design files. The same can probably be said for this FEA analysis. I may run preliminary concepts through this FEA software for a basic understanding of strength, but it would feel a lot more confident if I used the FEA plugin for Solidworks or Pro-E.
There are some benchmarks against the established systems on the website and you can compare the results. I like the solid “voxel” approach to estimating the calculation, seems more intuitive than the classic mesh model. The results in the comparisons are close to each other.
What types of things are you building?