| The SWAU Report, Issue 37 | Tuesday, July 31, 2007 |
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,
Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Western Kansas, 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 - Wants You!
PADT is looking for a highly motivated individual to join our team in the following positions:
-FE Analysis Engineer
-Mechanical Lab Manager
For more information please visit the Job Opportunities page on our website.
Become an APDL Master with PADT's APDL Guide
Teach Yourself ANSYS Customization with PADT's APDL Guide
This guide is a compilation of course notes from PADT’s very popular ANSYS Customization with APDL class. By popular demand, PADT has turned these notes into a 288-page guide that steps new and experienced ANSYS users through all of the details of APDL scripting. Its 12 chapters include reference information, examples, tips and hints, and eight workshops. The guide, available in hardcopy only, is an invaluable resource to anyone who wants to start using APDL or become an ANSYS “power user”. At $75 plus shipping, this manual will quickly pay for itself by saving you hours of research and trial-and-error.
For more information on this guide or how to purchase, please visit our website .
ANSYS Salutes Winner Alinghi of the 32nd America's Cup
Alinghi Overcomes Stiff Challenge by Emirates Team New Zealand: Both Teams Sailed on the Strength of Ansys Simuation
ANSYS, Inc announced that the winner of the 32nd America's Cup, Alinghi, used ANSYS technology to predict the effects of design changes on yacht performance. With both finalists' yacht designs optimized with ANSYS simulation software, Alinghi and its challenger were each prepared to take home the Cup, but Alinghi successfully crewed their racing yacht to defend the America's Cup, the most prestigious and elite competition in the yachting calendar.
Click Here to view full article.
Bill McDermott Named to ANSYS, Inc. Board of Directors
ANSYS, Inc. announced that its board of directors has elected Bill McDermott, President and Chief Executive Officer of SAP Americas & Asia Pacific Japan, to the ANSYS board. He also has been appointed to the Compensation Committee.
Since 2002, McDermott has been an executive and Corporate Officer at SAP, the largest business software company in the world. He is currently responsible for managing SAP's business activities throughout North and South America as well as Asia Pacific. To view full article please click here:
HP and Microsoft Alliance Continues to Drive Productivity in High-performance Computing
HP and Microsoft Corporation announced an extension of their worldwide sales and marketing agreement that addresses the high-performance computing (HPC) market.
The companies have come together to drive high-performance computing into the mass market by delivering supercomputing clusters that are easier to deploy, support and manage for enterprise and mid-market customers.
The extension of the alliance entails a multimillion dollar investment by both HP and Microsoft, and includes HP selling Microsoft Windows® Compute Cluster Server (CCS) 2003 direct and via reseller channels as part of the HP Unified Cluster Portfolio, which is supported on HP ProLiant servers, HP BladeSystem and HP Cluster platforms.
To view full article please click here:
Announcements
ANSYS Adds Pressure Equipment Module
The ANSYS Pressure Equipment Module allows you to design and optimize any part
of pressure equipment along with other accessories, structures and mechanical parts.
Please see the following link for more info: http://www.ansys.com/assets/brochures/pressure-equipment-11.pdf
Featured Article: The Advantages of General Purpose Simulation Tools
By Eric Miller
It happens about once a week, one of our salespeople will make a call and a customer will say “We are looking at QuickySim. We like it because it is built into our CAD system, it is really simple and easy to use, and it only costs about $5,000! Why should we use your big, expensive and complex tools?” At first we would panic and wonder how much of a discount ANSYS HQ will allow us, but over time we began to realize that you do get what you pay for, and that the “QuickySim” software of the world may demo well, but it often comes up short when you need to model real world simulations.
The other day over lunch, we got into a rather lengthy discussion as to why we find this to be true with customer after customer (people around us were discussion sports, politics, the latest starlet jail/rehab events, etc.… go figure). The conclusion we came to is that the only way to achieve simplicity and low cost is to limit generality in the software. A developer of this type of tool needs to pick a subset of how the tool will be used, hopefully a subset that contains the most common usage, and restrict functionality to what is needed to achieve this restricted usage.
At face value, this appears to not be such a bad thing; developers and users alike can focus their efforts on this subset of functionality and get really good at that. However, the reality of real world engineering is that no matter how often you use what is covered by the focused functionality, you always seem to need to step outside of that box to do more. And alas, the stuff outside the box is always more critical to the project.
We have even seen this with ANSYS, Inc. products. Every once in a while they come out with a simplified tool aimed at this request in the market and it never sells well. In the meantime we see ANSYS, FLUENT and CFX sales go up 10% to 20% a year. PADT encountered a similar situation with our AnsPak product, a beautiful add-on to ANSYS that automated the modeling of ball grid arrays for electronic packages. Tooting our own horn, this program was fantastic and was exactly what customers were asking for. But once we got it into the hands of users, we spent hours adding custom capabilities to it for each customer because it didn’t meet the specific needs for their real world problems. In hindsight, we designed it for simplicity and ease of use and not for generality and flexibility.
What people want is simple and low cost, but what they need is complex and flexible. The only way anyone has met that type of need in the marketplace is through the use of general purpose FEA and CFD programs that provide the user with the ability to use the program in the way they need.
So next time a CAD salesperson tries to sell you some slick, super-duper push-button solution, remember that you are not paid to run demo problems and benchmarks, you are paid to use simulation to model real world systems under real world loads. If life teaches us anything, it’s that the real world is unpredictable.
Questions?
Questions?
For more information or questions about these promotions, please contact PADT Sales.
PADT Training
Courses Offered in August, September, and October
SWAU Seminar Series
Seminars Offered in August, September, and October
| 8/22/2007 | Composites and ANSYS |
| 9/26/2007 | High Performance Computing Update |
| 10/24/2007 | Power Vibration Analysis |
Other Offerings
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