June 15th, 2026 marks the start of my 40th year as a user of Ansys. I don’t remember a lot from that long ago, but the months before that day, and a few weeks after, are still accessible because they were such an important part of my life’s journey. Professionally, sitting down at a computer terminal to use this computer program. I had no idea what it did or why engineers needed it. And I had absolutely no way to conceive of how that software tool would drive my career, my personal wealth, my friends, and a considerable part of my self-worth.
When my senior year was winding down in 1986, the job market was not great for engineers. Very few of my classmates in the Mechanical Engineering department at UC Berkeley had jobs. Most were trying to figure out how to get into a grad school. We wore our cheap wool three-piece suits that we bought at the discount suit store in San Francisco (Second Pair of Pants Free!) to interview after interview. And then, it was 1986, we would wait for the thin letter telling us how much they appreciated our time, but that they had gone a different direction.
Then, at the beginning of April, I got the thick letter. “We are pleased to let you know we are interested in offering you employment… fly you out for a day of interviews.” It was the Garrett Turbine Engine Company in Phoenix, Arizona. I got on a plane, stayed in a hotel, and then spent a full day being shown around and talking to manager after manager in what seemed like 30 different interviews, but it was probably more like 5 or 6. At the end of the day, they told me they had openings in controls and were building a new team to do analysis. I really didn’t know what either was. I wanted a design job. But on a whim, I said analysis.
A few months later, on June 15th of 1986, I found myself being escorted by an HR person to a side room on the top floor of the engineering building. I met a lot of people over the next hour. Then, my manager sat me down at my new desk, showed me how to log in to the Vax computer, and introduced me to a co-worker who would train me on the an-sis program. I had no idea what they were talking about.
By the end of the day, I was in love. Back then, we meshed by printing cross sections of the geometry on vellum, and then we had to draw a 2D mesh and number it by hand. Morphing and changing the mesh as we went. Then we went to a digitizer table and hand-entered every corner node on each section. It is kind of hard to believe how primitive it was, but after that, we would type the element connectivity into a text file. If this makes no sense to you, good. You didn’t have to suffer through these early days of Finite Element Analysis (FEA).
It was like building with Legos or solving puzzles every day. Taking 2D sections of 3D geometry and stitching them together into a volume made up of thousands of six-sided hexagons. It was not easy, and to be good at it, you have to be smart and work fast. When I got my first model put together and saw that 3D mesh on the screen, I wanted to cry. I did that. Most people could not even come close to doing what I just did.
That first model, and dozens that followed, made me an expert in FEA and in writing software to automate and speed up the modeling process. It also became a career and a business. We founded PADT about nine years later. The A in PADT stands for Analysis, which is what we called numerical simulation back then. We took what we learned at Allied Signal as the foundation of a company that focused on computer-aided engineering.
Around two years in, we were hired as a sub-distributor of the reseller in California. And a few years after that, we became a channel partner in our own right. Back then, we all did everything. Front office, back office, building and running models, doing IT, writing reports, selling to customers, and doing customer support. Some of my favorite hours back in those days were spent deep in the construction of a complex model.
It’s been at least a decade since I’ve built a model, maybe fifteen years since I did a complete Ansys simulation for a customer. But before that, I was able to become part of the Ansys inner circle. I had dinners with John Swanson, the original programmer of Ansys. I worked with customers, went to conferences, and served on advisory committees for developers. I made friends and was able to be a small part of creating something truly world-changing. I hosted the largest online forum for Ansys users (Xansys) and managed the most popular Ansys-related blog on PADT’s website. I still do the All Things Ansys Podcast.
The three biggest honors of my Ansys career were:
- Teaching an Ansys customization class with John Swanson at an Ansys User Group Conference
- Writing several software routines that are still in Ansys APDL.
- Being introduced to a new group of developers at Ansys headquarters as “he really knows how to use Ansys.”
Even better than that were the friends I made along the way. Some amazing humans.
I do miss it. The actual building and running of models. But, if I am honest, the tools have changed. Ansys is a very different company now. In fact, it is owned by someone else now. And my role at PADT has shifted significantly. But by sheer chance, I do get to write about Ansys. Every time I submit a new article, I’m reminded of how important this software program and the people who work in and around it are to me.
Forty years is a long time. But I still remember sitting down at that terminal to build that first model. I’m certainly glad I did.
We don’t have nearly enough pictures from those days. That’s me, on the far right. Maybe two years into using Ansys. The picture is of the Allied Signal Engines Modeling & Analysis group, or most of us. That engine, the TFE1042, is the foundation of PADT and my career around Ansys.
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