Open-source engineering software?

[Brian d marge]

Does anyone here use open source software for Engineering.

I use Calculix , which I quite like BUT

I am having a lot of problems meshing STL files. I am having better success with netgen.

but sometimes a simple shape just will not mesh throwing up warnings such as:

ERROR: TRIG 146 has 2 neighbours!!!!

Does anyone use this, have experience, know someone who does ....

This problem with meshing is really holding things back,,,,


Kind regards Stephen

[Max Preload]

Hope it's neighbours aren't like these ones.

But in all seriousness... I use Cosmosworks. I know it's not open source and it's certainly not cheap (or free... technically ) but it's good.

What sort of FEA are you doing? Not just structural?

[nigel]

I'm no engineer, but I do know a bit of OSS. Would gmsh work?

[Brian d marge]

Hi all I am using gsmh , it will show the part but produces an error when meshing to a tetrahedron , tet file .

What I do is design ,,,um motorbike bits, concentrating on of course Enfields ,
It started out of my Racing Enfield and sort of grew from there.

The biggest problem I face is getting a good mesh ,,I am disadvantaged in one respect and that is because of my computer skills , I use Linux , but I cant compile a program , not afraid of the command line ..but

I am trying to add the STEP module to netgen ,, have followed instructions but ,,,nadda

Hence the thread

Kind regards Stephen

[Fooman]

I use ABAQUS at work, but try some of the stuff here:

http://www-users.informatik.rwth-aac.../software.html

Not knowing anything about your software, can you just edit the input file manually - all the mesh will really do is generate co-ordinates of nodes/elements. Some of the more nifty FEA analysis I've seen was meshed using an ascii editor, graph paper and an FX-82 to sort out the trig.