http://mecway.com/download This is a free upgrade for version 3 customers. It includes many improvements that people have suggested. The main ones are:
Meshing and preprocessing:
Multiple CAD geometry faces can be selected together.
Open and mesh multiple .step files at once to make assemblies easier.
More reliable default meshing option “Fit midside nodes to geometry” turned off.
Plate mesh generators have instant preview and adjustable mesh density.
Torispherical and semiellipsoidal shells now include the knuckle and are moved to the Mesh tools -> Fit to curved surface tool.
Nodes can be selected according to their position by a formula.
Bonded contact has a “swap” button to quickly swap the master and slave surfaces.
Solver:
More comprehensive support for the CalculiX CCX solver including importing solution data for post processing, custom text input, more features exported to solver and easy-to-use contact.
Normal pressure can be a function of position specified as a formula.
Factor of safety with von Mises (solids) and Tsai-Wu (shells) failure criteria including first ply failure for laminates.
Convection and radiation can be time dependent.
Centrifugal force can be time dependent in nonlinear static analysis.
Dynamic response and modal response (now called mode superposition) have more features in common.
Displacements on frictionless support in static 3D analysis. Useful for an interference fit.
Static analysis with compression only support now uses an automatic non-configurable convergence criterion.
Fixed support only constrains the DOFs that its faces have. So beam sharing a node with a solid element's fixed support won't have its rotation constrained. Existing files are given extra constraints to maintain compatibility.
Load and constraint values can be specified as formulas.
If you stop the static or nonlinear solver before it's converged, it retains the result from the last iteration.
Nodes that aren't connected to any elements can be used in constraint equations.
Compression-only support can be used on the 2D faces of shell elements.
Line pressure can be applied to line2 elements as well as faces.
Display:
Faster graphics with large models.
Option for the popular Z-up view orientation convention.
Tool bar buttons for 6 orthogonal views.
Out of range color is configurable.
Contour plot can also be displayed with smooth gradients.
Node numbers and element numbers can be displayed separately.
Components and geometry items have “Hide all but this” and “Show all” options.
New units: kip, kN.m, kip.ft, ksi
Customizable contour plot colors.
Other:
Solution data is stored in a more compact format reducing size and speeding up loading of large files.
Faster application startup for 64 bit.
Removed:
Ramp contour plot color option. Use the customizable colors instead.
VRML (.wrl) file format for saving.
Spherical shell tool. Use Fit to curved surface instead.
Comments
The temperature module is great and very easy to use!
Now I'm only hoping that soon we can use a Drucker-Prager elasto-plastic model for concrete inside Mecway Is there any chance of this happening in the future?