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Industry Summary Articles

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

CONTACT Fast Concept Modelling: FCM Release 4.4 now available

CONTACT Software has enhanced its CATIA Workbench Fast Concept Modelling (FCM) in the area of automated batch mesh generation. The new FCM Version 4.4 now delivers a greater degree of automation when using solvers.

This makes it easier to prepare model variants for the downstream CAE processes. This speeds up design decisions and accelerates the comparison of variants (e.g. with regard to the configuration of a vehicle), opening up significant time and cost savings for companies across the entire development process. The new release also provides the option of using the FCM Fast Section Master module as a stand-alone solution. For users in the automotive manufacturing industry, this means that the associated CATIA variant generation functionality is significantly enhanced in the packaging process (video).

With FCM 4.4, time-consuming manual preparation of the CAD models for computer simulation can be shortened or at best completely avoided. When passing geometry data to the MSC Nastran input decks, a contact definition for creating independent meshes with Nastran's GLUEing function is now generated automatically. In addition to increased precision, this results in massive time savings when dealing with complex problems such as the optimization of beam structures in the bus and truck market. Meshes are now created from solids in batch processing using SimLab, a 3D mesh generator from Altair Engineering that is renowned for its speed and accuracy. As a result, the FCM loop from within CATIA is now also suitable for calculating and optimizing thick-walled structures.

It is thus possible to automatically dimension the bogie for an ICE train for the required service life of 30 years in an optimization loop. This is achieved by reducing stress levels resulting from the action of cumulative loads by making changes to the geometry. Optimization loops can be implemented with commercially available solutions such as Optimus from Noesis Solutions, optiSLang from Dynardo and LS-OPT from Dynamore or other optimizers.

CONTACT's FCM helps companies to implement end-to-end process chains in the world of CAE, which is dominated by specialist tools. FCM is an open system that uses readily available CAE software for the optimization loop and can be incorporated seamlessly in a company´s existing CAx environment.

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