Check it Out: Watch COMSOL Multiphysics 4.3a Highlights

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

I got to say that COMSOL Multiphysics has become quite the ecosystem for modeling and simulating physics-based systems. I say “ecosystem” because COMSOL is beyond “system” or “environment.” COMSOL is a well-engineered setting that—via a user-friendly GUI (or geeky interface if you’re wont to fiddle with partial differential equations)—enables you to unite multiple physics applications into an optimization and discovery platform for simulating complex new products or technologies. How COMSOL melds disparate physics analysis and third-party tools seems natural and seamless. The short video offered as part of today’s Check It Out shines with four examples of what I mean.

First, COMSOL Multiphysics Version 4.3a introduces a new interface. This is the start of a new ballgame: It connects multiphysics simulation and spreadsheets. Hands-on that means you can control a COMSOL simulation model inside of Excel. You can edit the model’s parameters and variables in Excel, and you can one-click synch your edits with the model. You can save and load Excel spreadsheets of, say, experimental, validation and calibration data related to a simulation from within COMSOL. And you can present simulation results through interactive 3D plots and insert plots into worksheets.

Version 4.3a debuts a new LiveLink for Solid Edge, arguably the most under-appreciated MCAD system going. This interface makes an associative connection between the two. So, change a feature in a Solid Edge model and the COMSOL geometry updates automatically. You can also run multiphysics simulations with parametric sweeps and design optimization directly from Solid Edge. This interface joins with other LiveLink interfaces for such third-party systems as AutoCAD, CATIA, Creo/Parametric, Inventor,  Matlab, SpaceClaim, and SolidWorks, BTW.

COMSOL Multiphysics 4.3a also offers new modules for analyzing stress/strain-based fatigue and for importing ECAD files, and there’s new support for cluster computing on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. Translation:  Huge (or small) and cost-effective analyses. This release sees upgrades,  enhancements, new solvers, and new capabilities to the more than 30 application-specific extension modules that extend COMSOL for the needs of people doing mechanical, electrical, fluid, reaction, and chemical modeling and simulation.

Check out the video highlights link up there (no registration hassle). Better, hit this link and attend a COMSOL workshop near you sometime from now to June. Workshop attendees receive a 2-week complimentary copy of COMSOL Multiphysics to use with your own models. They used to supply food too. High-power software to play with and grub someone else paid for. It does not get better than that.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Watch: COMSOL Multiphysics 4.3a Highlights

COMSOL Multiphysics Version 4.3a

COMSOL workshop