Introduction

SWAU — pronounced “swah-oo” — is the Southwest ANSYS Users (SWAU), an organization of ANSYS users and people interested in ANSYS, who are located in the Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico, and El Paso). The goal of the organization is to provide a sense of community for ANSYS users in the region, to serve as a means of communication about ANSYS, and to provide technical and peer resources to those interested in becoming ANSYS users.

News

PADT Hires New Sales Person

PADT welcomes Mario Vargas as our Senior Account Manager. Mario brings over 15 years of experience working with companies in Arizona and New Mexico. Some of you may know him from his recent days selling SolidEdge. Mario brings a lot of account knowledge, relationships, and energy to our sales group, so we are glad to have him as part of the PADT family. Feel free to call Mario at 480-813-4884 ext. 157, or email him at mario.vargas@padtinc.com.

ANSYS Named to Forbes 200 Best Small Companies

October 22, 2003 • ANSYS Inc. news release

ANSYS Inc. today announced it has been named to the Forbes 200 Best Small Companies, a list comprised of financially solid small-cap businesses. ANSYS ranked among the top 100 companies in the Forbes list for the second consecutive year. The Forbes 200 list was drawn from more than 3,500 companies with annual sales between $5 million and $600 million. Rankings are based on growth in sales, earnings and ROE as well as other financial and business metrics for the past five years and the latest 12 months.

“This honor is a credit to the people at ANSYS who, together with a large and loyal customer base and network of valued partners we’ve cultivated over the past 30 years, have helped us create the foundation for our success,” said Jim Cashman, president and chief executive officer of ANSYS. “Our ranking among the top 100 companies in this Forbes 200 list is a reflection of ANSYS' steady path of market leadership and growth at a time when economic issues slowed progress across the marketplace.”

Featured Product: ANSYS 8.0

Breakthrough: Multiphysics Allows Dissimilar Meshes Between Fields

The 8.0 release of ANSYS is packed full of significant advances in all areas of the program, but one enhancement in the Multiphysics package is so significant that it deserves to be pointed out on its own before we talk about the other changes. This improvement is the ability in a Multiphysics analysis to transfer loads between two regions with totally different meshes. This addition puts the ANSYS Multiphysics offering even farther ahead of any other solution on the market today and makes this type of simulation easier to set up, computationally more efficient, and significantly more accurate.

Anyone who has done a serious Multiphysics analysis knows that one of the more annoying aspects is trying to get a “compromise” mesh between two different regions. For example, MEMS devices often have a structural region and an electrostatic “air” region. Usually, you have to give up accuracy in your “air” region to allow for transition into a reasonable structural mesh. The mesh required for accuracy is totally different for the two areas, and when the structure starts to distort, the “air” mesh can often become distorted to the point where it loses accuracy. This capability was developed several releases ago for the FSI capability and has been generalized for all coupled-load solutions available in the Multiphysics product. Many users have been asking for a solution to the problem for some time.

The developers at ANSYS, Inc. have responded in ANSYS 8.0 with powerful load interpolation algorithms that accurately convey loads across dissimilar mesh boundaries. They continue their history of giving users control over their analysis by not only enabling significant control over mesh densities, but also by providing the user with two options for controlling the accuracy of the load transfer. In the first option, Conservative Transfer, the user can specify an interpolation where the program will ensure that the total load (force, displacement, heat flux, etc.) is the same on both sides of the boundary. In the second option, Non-Conservative Transfer, the distribution of the load is maintained but the total loads may not agree. This former is best for fluxes and forces and the latter for displacements and temperatures.

The bottom line is that one of the more time-consuming and frustrating steps in accurate system simulation has been removed with this new feature, and in our initial use of 8.0, PADT has seen significant improvements in accuracy and productivity from applying this enhancement. There is a good discussion on how this works in Chapter 4 of the 8.0 Coupled-Field Analysis Guide documentation, and we will be covering it in detail during our upcoming 8.0 Update Seminar and in a future Multiphysics Seminar (schedule TBD).

Please contact Steve Hendry at PADT for any additional information on this powerful new tool.

Current Promotions

Free T-Shirts! – PADT Referral Program for ANSYS

PADT needs your help to grow the ANSYS user community in Arizona and New Mexico. Simply refer a friend or peer not currently using ANSYS to PADT, and receive a free, really cool, PADT/ANSYS T-shirt! We are looking for potential new users:

Engineers who do not currently have analysis tools and could benefit by using ANSYS
Engineers who are using competitors’ tools

20% Discount on Multiphysics Upgrade

Receive a 20% discount on upgrading any ANSYS product to a full Multiphysics license plus the full TECS list price. See product details.

10% Discount on PADT Training for New Registrants

Mention SWAU and receive 10% off the price of any scheduled PADT class offered through September 30, 2003. This discount applies to new registrants only, and is subject to PADT’s normal signup and cancellation policies. Please see the PADT web site for further information on courses (schedule shown below), or contact Ted Harris, PADT’s Manager of Technical Support and Training.

Questions?

For more information or questions about these promotions, please contact PADT Sales.

PADT Training

Courses Offered in November, December, and January

11/3	-	11/5	101 - Introduction to ANSYS, Part I (in Tempe, AZ)
11/17	-	11/18	102 - Introduction to ANSYS, Part II (in Tempe, AZ)
12/17	-	12/19	201 - Basic Structural Nonlinearities (in Tempe, AZ)
1/12	-	1/14	101 - Introduction to ANSYS, Part I (in Tempe, AZ)

SWAU Seminar Series

Seminars Offered in November, December, and January

11/12/2003	ANSYS 8.0 Overview
1/28/2004	Probabilistics and Optimization with the New Workbench Tools

Other Offerings

Did You Know...

PADT offers Engineering Services?

PADT offers Rapid Manufacturing and Stratasys Dimension 3D printers?

PADT offers Systems R&D such as Fuel Cells?

Want to Stay Up to Date on ANSYS Technical Information?

To subscribe to The Focus, or any other PADT electronic publications (including this newsletter), please visit our subscriptions center. To view the most recent issues of the SWAU Report, please visit the SWAU Center.