About The Focus

Mission of “The Focus”

To provide useful information to the ANSYS user community in a succinct, technical, and humorous way.

About “The Focus”

Sometime in 2001, an engineer at PADT named Rod Scholl got the idea in his head that the ANSYS user community could really use a newsletter.  Something with useful tips and tricks that would help everyone be better users.  He asked PADT management if he could publish such a newsletter and management thought “how much could this cost us, he’ll do three issues and like all other newsletters it will fade away.”  Well, it cost a lot more than we thought. Since then PADT has published 74 issues of the Focus as a newsletter through June of 2010.  In 2010, “The Focus” switched to a blog format.  With thousands of subscribers around the world, it is the largest independent ANSYS related publication in the world.

When “The Focus” started ANSYS, Inc. only had ANSYS and ICEM CFD as programs.  Since then they have acquired CFX, AUTODYN, FLUENT, ICEPAK, Maxwell, HFSS and a handful of smaller tools. So the breadth and depth of the articles has grown over time with ANSYS, Inc.  The articles are written by engineers, for engineers. When we find out something new in an ANSYS, Inc. product, or figure out something difficult, we often say to ourselves “this would be something that others might find useful” and we write it up in a way that we would want to read it ourselves.

Publishing “The Focus” has been one of the more enjoyable tasks for our Technical Support Team.  They get to be creative, share their experience, and maybe crack a few very bad jokes or puns.  In addition, there is no better way to learn something well than to try and explain it to several thousand people in a few pages.  We hope that readers around the world find “The Focus” as educational and entertaining as we do.

Why PADT Publishes “The Focus”

A key foundation of PADT is our relationship with ANSYS, Inc. and the ANSYS user community. About half of our engineers have made a career out of using, supporting and teaching ANSYS, Inc. products.  In short, PADT probably would not exist if it wasn’t for John Swanson sitting at home writing ANSYS way back when.  So we feel that we need to give back to the community that has allowed our company to grow and flourish.  We do this through “The Focus” and by sponsoring the XANSYS.org user forum.  And, it doesn’t hurt to get our name out there.

About PADT

PADT is a mechanical engineering services company headquartered in Tempe, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona.  Founded in 1994, the company focuses on providing world class products and services for simulation, product development, and rapid prototyping.  The company also has an office in Denver, Colorado as well as staff that work from their homes in several cities around the country.  The basic concept behind the company is to bring high-end aerospace type simulation, design, and manufacturing engineering to companies that do not have such in-house capabilities or who need additional capacity. 

The CAE Sales & Services department at PADT uses ANSYS, Inc.’s products to conduct structural, dynamic, CFD, thermal, electromagnetic, and Multiphysics simulation to customers around the globe.  PADT’s technical expertise is also available for training and one-on-one support to any customer around the world. The department also sells and the majority of products from ANSYS, Inc in the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada.  PADT is also proud to sell and support 3D Printers and Manufacturing systems from Stratasys.

The Product Development department focuses on helping customers bring products from concept to reality through design, testing, quality systems, manufacturing and commercialization.  By focusing on bringing advanced engineering experience and technology to our customers, PADT has become known as a place to bring difficult development problems. 

The Rapid Prototyping department provides a surprisingly rare aspect to the crowded RP world, customer service.  With SLS, SLS, FDM and PolyJet systems on-site, PADT can fit the right technology to every customers needs.  And if a customer needs to go beyond a single prototype, the team can produce soft tooling, rapid hard tooling, and prototype injection molding. 

PADT does a lot of things, and it is hard to list them all here.  To learn more, please visit our web site: www.PADTINC.com