NX Nastran

For more than 30 years, NX Nastran has been the finite element analysis solver of choice in almost every major industry, including aerospace/ defense, automotive, shipbuilding, heavy machinery, medical and consumer products. It is an industry standard for analysis of stress, vibration, structural failure/ durability, heat transfer, noise/acoustics and flutter/aeroelasticity.

Predictive Engineering sells and supports a version of NX Nastran called NX Nastran for Femap. This Windows-native, desktop analysis solution combines Femap pre-and post-processing with the well known and respected analysis capabilities of NX Nastran. With this bundled solution, you get two of the world's most popular and powerful structural analysis programs, seamlessly integrated for maximum performance and efficiency.

NX Nastran for Femap supports a broad range of NX Nastran capabilities, such as linear and non-linear static, normal modes, Eigenvalue, transient/dynamic, frequency/harmonic response, response spectrum, random response and buckling. In addition NX Nastran for Femap includes additional options for aeroelasticity, super-elements, optimization and DMAP.

Detailed and complete NX Nastran control
Using Femap, it is possible to directly define and control most aspects of the NX Nastran simulation. This includes: controlling the solution options (such as defining an iterative solution), param keyword settings, specific job controls (such as re-start controls, executive controls and manual controls with DMAP), case controls (load and constraint control), model checking (geomcheck controls, weight and ground checks), and detailed result generation controls.

In addition, a feature called VisQ provides users with advanced tools within Femap for job management tasks such as defining, scheduling and tracking NX Nastran simulations.

NX Nastran for Femap Structural Analysis Toolkit
The NX Nastran for Femap Structural Analysis Toolkit is an additional module that complements NX Nastran for Femap. It is able to process selected data from a Nastran binary results file and present the results in ASCII text, Microsoft Excel, Universal file and HTML format. Fully UI driven, it is able to process and calculate stress and margins of safety, element forces, grid point force and joints, modal analysis summaries, mass properties, random and harmonic base excitations. This functionality makes the NX Nastran for Femap Structural Analysis Toolkit particularly useful in organizing numerous, large-results data blocks into meaningful summaries, thereby saving valuable analysis time.

Femap Integration with NX Nastran
Femap has a 15-year history of working as a pre- and post- processor to Nastran. In addition to NX Nastran Femap is also able to support MSC.Nastran, UAI Nastran, CSA Nastran, and 5 other popular versions of Nastran. All of these solvers can be easily encapsulated within Femap while providing a high degree of solution controls to the user.

Top Ten Reasons to switch to UGS NX Nastran for Femap 

1. Real Nastran: NX Nastran for Femap is a true, high-quality Nastran solution with a pedigree going back 30 years. If you want a true Nastran solution then go NX Nastran for Femap (and not merely some black box analysis code that can import a Nastran deck and write out a Nastran op2 file).

2. Straight to the Source: Customers receive updated versions of Femap immediately. There is no time delay as the product is repackaged by third-party integrators.

3. Nastran Integration: The Femap and NX Nastran development teams are closely linked, and Femap is the UGS flagship modeler for NX Nastran. New NX Nastran functionality is simultaneously included within Femap. Case in point is the new linear contact in NX Nastran V4.0 that was seamlessly implemented in Femap V9.1.

4. Pricing:  NX Nastran for Femap provides industrial-strength modeling with a true Nastran solver, not an imitator. This is the best value on the market for legendary quality, speed and accuracy. The NX Nastran for Femap base package includes:

a. Heat transfer

b. Nonlinear material and geometric behavior

c. Multiple CPU (shared memory parallel) and PCGLSS iterative solver

d. Full 3-D linear contact and advanced assembly modeling techniques.

5. Ease of Deployment and Free USB Keys:  NX Nastran for Femap has a licensing system that requires only a single set of license codes to activate both programs. And you won’t be charged to upgrade your hardware lock to the more modern USB key.

6. New and Unique Functionality:  NX Nastran for Femap offers greater solution scalability as well as availability of advanced analysis modules including DMAP, super-elements, aeroelasticity, rotor dynamics, advanced thermal analysis, and computational fluid dynamics with the flow solver. Why is this important? Although imitation Nastran solvers may comment that one does not need to perform DMAP routines to obtain specialized analysis results, this statement is only true if your code is not Nastran and therefore does not contain DMAP subroutines.

7. CAD Independent: Femap provides direct CAD access without having to buy CAD. Femap is designed to be your point solution and can handle every major CAD system right up to CATIA V5 and beyond. Moreover, Femap offers direct CAD geometry associativity for design optimization.

8. Speed: The NX Nastran development group is focused on solving large problems fast. Their group has succeeded in taking large Eigenvalue problems and distributing the solution sequence over multiple CPUs and multiple computers.  Eigenvalue solution speed is critical to the analysis of a broad range of dynamics problems from submarines, autos, planes and satellites. It is the lion’s share of the analysis marketplace and NX Nastran is at its center.

9. User-friendly Documentation: The NX Nastran for Femap documentation has been rewritten and updated specifically for the new user.

10. Support by Predictive Engineering and UGS:  When you upgrade and join our team – two groups of dedicated analysts (at Predictive Engineering and at UGS) are available to support your engineering requests. To better assist you in model debugging, Predictive Engineering uses WebEx to offer point-to-point technical assistance. In short, you are never put on endless hold when you call for technical support.

System Requirements

Platform: Windows 2000/XP

Hardware:

• Intel^® / AMD^® 1.5 GHz
• 1 GB of RAM
• 20 GB hard drive.