Editor’s Pick: NEi Fusion V1.4 Merges CAD & Nastran

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

Today, NEI Software unveiled version 1.4 of its NEi Fusion software. This is something that you should know about, especially if you’re a consultant or if you’re the backbone of it all — you know, just a working stiff engineer at some small or mid-sized company who needs top-shelf simulation for product development, virtual testing, design validation, and quality assurance without blowing out the budget. Or, frankly, if you’re just looking for a better way to design, analyze, and get product to market faster.

Basically, and way too simply, think of NEi Fusion as 3D MCAD engineered from the FEA analyst’s point of view. Or, think of NEi Fusion as Nastran that suddenly is not so grumpy about working with 3D MCAD. So, instead of designing an MCAD file then analyzing, you or your design-analysis teammates can create your MCAD design in collaboration with FEA. And it’s not just FEA with a complementary MCAD application or vice versa. NEi Fusion is real, high-powered Nastran merged with real, high-productivity MCAD. You leverage both right from the start of your product design cycle. Kind of like the old Certs commercial: It’s two, two applications in one.

By real, I mean forces, pressure, thermal conditions,  temperature, vibration, and acceleration loads. You can see deformation,  stresses, strains, heat transfer, and modal shapes early and often as you design with a real 3D parametric modeler that’s SolidWorks-class, and you can import files from the major MCAD systems if need be.

NEi Fusion even does composite analysis, including one called Progressive Ply Failure Analysis. PPFA is a new simulation technology from NEi that allows you to examine the propagation of damage through a structure after first-ply failure so that you can make an assessment of conditions for ultimate failure. Linear buckling, nonlinear stress, nonlinear transient event analysis, and symmetric, antisymmetric, axisymmetric boundary conditions, you get the idea. And, yes, meshing flexibility too.

Version 1.4 now supports 64-bit Windows operating systems. Meshing has been enhanced with the ability to display/hide shell element normals, the ability to reverse element normals that lie on a face/surface, and a new feature that displays troubled areas on failed meshes so that you can fix the geometry or mesh quickly without hunting around for the problem.

There’s a lot of other enhancements offered in NEI Fusion v 1.4, ranging from nonlinear properties now being stored in the NEi Fusion material database to table data input viewable as an XY plot to user-specified solver paths. You can read all about that in today’s Pick of the Week write-up,  where you’ll also find links to webinars, videos, brochures, etc. But your takeaway is that NEi Fusion v1.4 is more than just a list of new enhancements. NEi Fusion is an enhanced way for you to do your job.

Thanks, pal. — Lockwood
Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering Magazine