The Simulation Professional package unlocks six additional Study types – other kinds of physics – beyond the common linear-elastic stress/strain response of a Static analysis found in Simulation Standard. Furthermore, the folks at SolidWorks throw in a handful of powerful and interesting bits of functionality in Simulation Professional that extend the capability of the ubiquitous Static Study!
Update: Two days after this post was published, SolidWorks announced a new “Simulation Standard” product package. This new license option gives access to Static, and Fatigue analysis even if you do not have SOLIDWORKS Premium. This post originally detailed the differences between Simulation Professional and the Simulation in SOLIDWORKS Premium. Notes about the new Simulation Standard package have been added in blue with asterisks below.
SOLIDWORKS Simulation is offered in three levels of product packaging:
- Simulation (which is included in SOLIDWORKS Premium)
*1 1/2. Simulation Standard (which is a little more than what’s included in SOLIDWORKS Premium) - Simulation Professional
- Simulation Premium
Generally, people get involved with Simulation Premium when they need to analyze nonlinear materials, or want to look at forced vibration and other Dynamic material behaviors.
Simulation Standard deals only with a linear stress-strain material response, although there are some nonlinearities that can be analyzed such as gap and contact, and large displacement problems.
People usually choose Simulation Professional because they want to run Thermal Studies and/or Frequency Studies. But there’s more to Simulation Professional than that!
Additional Study Types
In Sim Pro, as we call it around here, these Study types build upon the same user interface concepts as the Static Study such as how you define Materials, create a Mesh, apply Loads, create Result Plots, and so on. Yet different equations are solved, representing different physical behaviors. Here’s a run-down of what they are and what they’re for.
- Thermal – Instead of solving for displacement due to forces and stiffness, this study solves for temperature due to heat and conductivity. Determines the temperature distributions and heat flux through one or more solids, primarily conduction in nature and including convection and radiation as boundary conditions. Can import convection coefficients from Flow Simulation (a separate SolidWorks product). Thermal Studies are a popular prerequisite for thermal stress problems (which combine this Study type with the Static Study type).
- Frequency – Also known as a “modal analysis”. Finds the displacement solutions which balance spring stiffness and inertial stiffness. Determines the mode shapes and corresponding natural frequencies of a structure. Sometimes used as a design criterion, but more often is used to expose design concerns.
- Buckling – Very similar physics to the Frequency Study. Determines the shape and load factor which would push the natural frequency down to 0 Hz and result in structural collapse. Corresponds to linear elastic buckling theory.
- Drop Test – Lets you do a special subset of the more generalized Dynamic Study found in Sim Premium. Using nonlinear solvers, determines the displacements and stresses in an object that impacts a flat surface. Damping effects are neglected as the pressure wave propagates through the material.
- *Fatigue – A study of a study. Takes the results of one or more Static Studies and compares them to the stress-cycle (S-N) curves for the materials to determine expected life. Includes compensation factors for less than ideal conditions. Especially useful for crunching a histogram of a variable load history. *The new Simulation Standard package includes Fatigue.
- Pressure Vessel Design – Another study of a study: Takes the results of several Static Studies and performs linear combination of stresses to validate a design in accordance with regulatory codes that predate FEA. In my 16 years supporting Sim, I have met 2 people who do this.
Additional Functionality
This is the stuff I really wanted this blog post to be about, because it’s not as obvious or well-documented as the different Study types. There are some bits of functionality sprinkled throughout Simulation that you will only be able to use if you have Sim Pro or better. Some are major, some are minor. Here they are.
Design Study (with Optimization of Simulation data)
The Design Study is available to all levels of SolidWorks and Simulation; it lets you quickly run a batch of many parametric iterations to explore your design. SolidWorks Premium adds an optimization solver, using goal-seeking theory to help find the best combination of length and thickness that minimizes mass, for example. Simulation Professional gives you the ability use Simulation parameters and results in the optimization. For example, you could find the smallest thickness that doesn’t exceed a maximum displacement or stress.
Submodeling Study
New in version 2013, this is a special kind of static study which is created from within a parent Static Study. You select one or more bodies to extract from a larger model, and the displacements on their faces are converted to boundary conditions in a new Submodeling Study of just those bodies. Then you can try out design ideas and run analyses on this subset of your geometry much quicker than running the full model.
2D Simplification
New in version 2011, and a long-awaited rewrite from the legacy COSMOS DesignSTAR product, this is an option available with Static, Thermal, and Nonlinear Studies. Instead of meshing the entire 3D model (or even a 3D slice of it), a wizard walks you through extracting a 2D cross-section and defining it as axisymmetric, planar stress, or planar strain. The mesh and solver understand that the 2D section is a piece of pi, or has uniform thickness, or stretches on infinitely. This is a major shortcut that is ridiculously more efficient to run.
Edge Weld Connector
You could instead use a Bonded contact to hold the edge of one part to the face of another, but the Edge Weld Connector gets more specific about the junction. The primary benefit is the solver will do some stress calculations for the weld bead itself, instead of assuming it to be ideal. Then, either a specified bead size can get a pass/fail, or you can get an estimate of the required bead size for your situation. The interface is similar to the Bolt Check Plots. This was added in version 2010.
Export to other FEA
It is possible to do some of your FEA pre-pocessing in SolidWorks Simulation, and then export the mesh and some other setup info for processing in another FEA code such as ANSYS, ABAQUS, NASTRAN, PATRAN, and I-DEAS. Only the GEOSTAR translator is available with Simulation Standard. Details about these translators are not in the Help file, they are in Word DOCs in the installation folder (C:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\SolidWorks\Simulation).
*Trend Tracker
The Trend Tracker is a nice time-saver. With it you click a button to capture a snapshot of your design as you change it and re-run a Study. It will capture the model, a picture of it, and also record and graph some key values like mass and max stress. Then you can see how your design changes affected performance and it’s just a mouse click away to revert to a previous snapshot of the model. *The new Simulation Standard package includes Trend Tracker.
Body from Deformed Shape
Right click on the Results folder and you can Create Body from Deformed Shape. There is the option to save it as a new Configuration, or as a new Part file. It uses the calculated displacements to create a new solid body from the original part, using some of the same technology found in the Flex feature. Handy for creating stress-compensated shapes.
Automatic Conversion of Toolbox Fasteners to Bolts
This is the newest addition to the Simulation Professional package. In version 2014, holes in an assembly which contain Toolbox fasteners can get automatically setup as Bolt Connectors in a Static (or Nonlinear) Study. This eliminates the manual process of selecting faces, defining the tensile stress area, defining a bolt material, and so on. It works with countersink holes and screws too, and applies a preload based on 15% of the yield strength of the bolt. You still need to define a contact condition between the parts that are held together. Potentially a huge time saver.
Event-Based Motion (in Motion Study)
SolidWorks Premium (and Simulation Standard) includes Motion analysis, which calculates rigid body kinematics. It is a completely different software from the Simulation we’ve been talking about (although some integration exists). I mention it because Simulation Professional also extends the Motion functionality to allow Event-Based setup of the moving parts. This gives you an interface to define triggers and chains of interdependent actions to simulate the kind of controlled motion typical in automation equipment. Without Sim Pro you are limited to time-based motion only.
Next Steps
Most published product matrix rows and columns of checkmarks are generally hard to interpret thanks to obfuscation by marketing phraseology. Although, lately, this one isn’t too bad. Your best bet to learn more about Sim Pro is to contact one of our sales reps, or just come take a class! CAPINC’s 3-day Simulation class focuses on the Sim Pro Study types during the third day.