Inventor of medical devices, the man behind the Segway, and FIRST backer Dean Kamenvisited the Phoenix area yesterday and today and we were lucky enough to have people from PADT invited to two different events at which he spoke.  For engineers involved in product development, this is like a visit from an NFL quarterback for most people.  He turned out to be open, engaging, and a very good speaker. 

We could go on in adoration and explore the guilt and envy we feel after seeing all that he has done.  Instead we thought we would highlight two things we learned from his visit:

1. The FIRST program that he started and still heads is making a huge difference in this country and around the world.  PADT has been peripherally involved, focusing instead more on the underwater robot scholastic competitions that are very popular here in Phoenix.  But FIRST is now huge, and is still growing.  But what we learned is the positive impact it is having: Students who participate in FIRST are 3 times more likely to become engineers, 30% more likely to attend college, and twice as likely to volunteer in their communities. Those are some positive numbers.  Those of us in the engineering world should take advantage of that and support FIRST.
   
                                                                     http://www.usfirst.org/
   
2. Second, he offered a unique perspective on how engineers see the world.  When he was young he heard the story of David and Goliath.   Most people see a religious message in this story, there are various interpretations. But as a child, Dean Kamen did not see those messages.  What he saw was that David won because he had better technology. He had a sling shot.  That is how he beat the giant.  I found that a very interesting point of view. If you don’t get it, ask an engineer.

If you ever have the chance to explore what his company, DEKA, is currently doing with a revolutionary power generation and water purification solution for areas of the globe without power or clean water, do so.  It is very leading edge stirling engine and distillation technology. 

Okay, so it’s not the ugly critter in the picture, (that on was found at my house), but the bug in ANSYS R14 can give you the willies just the same. ANSYS, Inc. is working very hard to get the situation remedied, and they will be sending out defect notices shortly.  They provided a quick-fix however, and we wanted to get it out to you as  quickly as possible. So I have done some screen captures while I ran through the fix.

The issue found is that if you close a Mechanical, or Meshing, session and then hit ‘Save’ on the project window, you may lose the contents of your Mechanical database.   The problem has arisen in R14 because ANSYS, Inc. has decreased the start up time of Mechanical by pre-loading it when Workbench is started. When you close Mechanical, it stays open in the background as an empty database. There is a 1-second ‘window of opportunity’ after you close the Mechanical editor and save the project file when the process threads are not fully synchronized.  If you save during this period, the blank session gets saved on top of the good session, and all data is lost.  If you wait longer than a second, there shouldn’t be an issue, but customers have been reporting longer times where they have still lost data.  ANSYS, Inc. is working with those customers to find out what is causing the longer times on their boxes.

Luckily the remedy is simple, and hopefully none of you will have to lose any data.  Since the issue is caused by the pre-loading of Mechanical, the remedy is to simply turn the pre-loading off.  This has to be done from  the Tools > Options menu on the Project window. Just uncheck the Pre-Load box in both the Mechanical and Meshing dialog boxes, and then close Workbench after hitting ‘OK’. The next time you open Workbench, the bug will be neutralized.

I just wish it was that easy for that creepy guy in the picture!

Those of us who do simulation for a living spend a lot of time focusing on faster, cheaper, better.  But we rarely deal with the hard, and cold reality that better often means safer.  Please take some time to read the blog entry below from an ANSYS employee who survived and insane crash, because a bunch of nerds at Nissan ran simulations over and over again on his car so that it would protect him.  Warning... may make you mist up a bit.

http://blog.ansys.com/2012/01/26/nissan-understand-behind-realize-your-product-promise/

While in San Diego this week to teach a training class, PADT's Jason Krantz did what most PADT engineers do when they have an evening in a new, exciting city - he spent the night searching the internet for useful ANSYS knowledge.  OK, maybe not.  But he did stumble on something worth sharing.

Sheldon Imaoka published a very useful ScreenCast on how to use Workbench systems to get ANSYS Mechanical APDL material properties into engineering data without having to write a translator from APDL to XML or typing the values into the Engineering Data interface.  Take a look:

We also highly recomend you visit Sheldon't web site, ansys.net, for tons more useful info.  You can also find articles published by Sheldon in the official ANSYS blog.

Here are the files for the webinar on External Connection from 10/14/2011.

Example XML File: sampleconfig2.xml

Example Python Script:  costcalc.py

Sample Input File: costcalc.inp

PDF Of PowerPoint: External_Connections_2011_10_14.pdf

You can find a recording of this webinar and all others at: padtincevents.webex.com