For most designers and engineers, the majority of their day is spent in the Pro/ENGINEER window hammering out models, putting together large assemblies, or attending to the painstaking details of a 2D drawing.  Others get the fortunate task of routing cables through an assembly or even creating a CNC path to mill out features on a part.  But one of the cooler and more fun things to do is actually run a Mechanica analysis on those parts and see what they will do in the real world.

We just recently went through upgrading the Pro/MECHANICA tutorial series to WildFire 3.0 and WildFire 4.0.  I was dreading this a bit as I had not stepped into the FEA world for a while.  Plus you start talking about meshes, elements, and degrees of freedom and you may be looking at some catch up time.

Much to my surprise – it was easy.  I forgot how intuitive and easy to use Mechanica really is for those designers that need to jump in and get some stress and displacement data.  From a workflow standpoint, a basics analysis really only consists of a few items, including:

• Assign a Material
• Constrain the Model
• Apply your Loads
• Run the Analysis
• Sit Back and Enjoy the Results

Granted, there is quite a bit more that you can do and control within Mechanica.  If you are a PHD in FEA, you should be covered as well.  That being said, it is fairly straightforward to setup a quick run.  With today’s screaming hardware, running an analysis takes a fraction of the time it did even just a few years ago. 

If you have never used Mechanica, make sure you check out our updates to the Mechanica Tutorials and I am sure you will agree – Pro/MECHANICA is Pretty Cool!