When it comes to testing your designs virtually, you may find yourself in one of the following categories:
- You spend the bulk of your working or even waking hours testing designs, as that brings you life! It’s what gets you up in the morning.
- You know that testing your designs is important, so you give it your best shot and cross your fingers when it’s time to make a physical prototype or add your stamp of approval.
- Simulation scares the living daylights out of you, and everything you make is overbuilt or has gone through several generations of costly physical prototypes.
You may be like me in that at some point in your career, each one of those descriptions was true of you. When I saw simulation tools within the design application for the first time it was amazing, but I was afraid to touch it. I was afraid I might break it somehow, and hoped no one was watching while I explored these new tools. And forget about demonstrating the software to a customer… they might ask me a question!
That was a while ago however, and by now, you could say that I have come full circle. Using simulation software is a gratifying experience! Is it what gets me up in the morning? Well, actually yes… that is if I had the solver running overnight on a fluid flow analysis.
Beginning next week, I’m going to kick off a blog series which will cover some helpful tips for all levels of simulation users. The first few posts will focus primarily on FEA features in Autodesk Inventor Professional, Autodesk Nastran In-CAD, and Autodesk Fusion 360. Later on, we can dive into some other simulation study types like fluid flow.
Welcome to “Sim with Jim.” I hope you enjoy this series. Please feel free to comment if you have any thoughts or suggestions, or reach out to me directly on Twitter (@jimbyrne7777). See you next week!
(0)