First off, I steal from the best with pride...and I stole this example from Dave May from the Autodesk SIM Squad. Despite being a Penn State fan, he is a pretty good guy.
Starting with the 2012 product release, Autodesk Simulation (the artist formerly known as Algor) ships with Inventor Fusion in the box. Just like a combo meal at your favorite fast food joint, we put more on your plate...no toy included. Why no toy? Because with this kind of power, it certainly isn't a kids meal. Now you can modify and simplify 3D CAD geometry, regardless of source, as part of your design validation when using Autodesk Simulation.
Many times the geometry generated in 3D CAD tools includes features and details that are somewhat unnecessary for FEA purposes. If extruded text, fillets, etc are not key to the structural integrety of a model, then it helps if you can turn them off for running analysis.
Even if you have access to all of the features that make up a native 3D CAD model, simply turning them off may not give you the desired results since a designer my not keep FEA requirements in mind when modeling their part.
Enter Inventor Fusion
Inventor Fusion gives you the ability to directly modify and/or simplify your models, and has a direct integration with Autodesk Simulation. Let's take a look at a simple example of why this matters:
Let's say you have a part that has a few detail features. Initially, you may not see a big deal with this. I mean, it really isn't 'complex', it opens fast, and Autodesk Simulation meshes it with ease (I am using the default settings for this entire example).
Here is a basic handle opened in Inventor Fusion. By simply pressing the Autodesk Simulation icon on the Simulation tab, the model is handed directly from Fusion to ADSK Sim.
From there, ADSK Sim is fired up and the model is inserted into the simulation environment. A few moments after hitting Generate Mesh, the model is meshed and I pulled up the Meshing Results. I highlighted a few things: nearly 8000 elements were created and ADSK Sim did a great job with the automesh of meshing the fine detail fo the fillets, etc.
This may not seem like a big deal on the surface...but, what if I had hundreds of these models in an assembly? Starts to add up, right? Regardless of complexity, you always want to be in the habit of working with best practices. So, let's go back and simplify this model for simulation.
Inside of Fusion, I can select the Fillet features and suppress them (since this was a native .ipt file). But, there are two problems with this: 1) it simplifies critical structural geometry 2) would make for a very boring blog post.
Let's leverage the power of Fusion for some direct model editing. We can select the features we want to remove (the finger groves) and simply delete them. This is a native Inventor .ipt file, but this would work the same on any file type (.stp, .x_t, .igs, .whatever).
Fusion takes care of the patching and sews up our model so it is watertight again. And because we opened this file via Fusion, it is associative to ADSK Sim....even if it is a .whatever file. You simply press the Autodesk Simulation button again.
Now that the Fusion based model update has been sent back to ADSK Sim, all that is left to do is remesh the model (a tedious single button click). All of the relevant boundary conditions would be preserved, but a new mesh is required due to the new model topology. And take a look. The element count is down to ~3300 (as you can see, I prefer rounding up).
Adding Inventor Fusion to Autodesk Simulation 2012 makes all the sense in the world. Now your model simplification changes can be done quickly and directly. The benefits of the Fusion/ADSK Sim combo meal can go much further than simplification as well. You can isolate a model in this workflow for 'what if' simulation scenarios without dirtying up the released engineering model, use Fusion instead of tying up an Inventor license, etc.
So, not only is the a sweet combo meal...kinda feel like we supersized it.
-lw
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