Mecway > Ansys

Mishal

Hi Guys

So I have been doing FEA for around 11 years now, and I have just been introduced to Ansys.
I am finding it utterly horrible!!! Is it just me or is Ansys not as amazing as it is made out to be?

Mecway in my opinion is honestly a far better option.

To put it into perspective I have managed to recreate a model on Calculix where the the pressure on the surface varies with the displacement inherently creating a buoyancy force which is calculated during the actual simulation. I have done this in the past on Strand7 which costs a fraction of Ansys. This same task on Ansys seems to be extremely difficult to perform, further to this the expectation is to then use AQWA.

The post processioning on Ansys feels so limited. It seems to work well if you interested in investing many hours coding through Python or APDL to perform remedial stuff provided on other software.

Ansys seems to be sales scheme where very limited functionality is provided to the user and the expectation is that certain industries will get additional packages to perform complex tasks however there is no real general purpose FEA component to the software unless you are willing to develop it yourself through an API...

Am I missing something, or do others feel the same?

prop_design

I used ANSYS, a long time ago (and for many years). Before their Workbench product was created, there was DesignSpace. DesignSpace was nice. I wasn't that big of a Workbench fan. However, at first, Workbench was just a renamed DesignSpace. However, over time they just kept making it worse, in my opinion. They had so many products and acquisitions that I guess they finally created a new GUI. I haven't used it. Where ANSYS was ahead of everyone was in meshing, contact, and nonlinear analysis. The meshing is why I chose DesignSpace. No one was even close to what that product could mesh. When I first started testing Mecway, I did extensive comparisons to ANSYS. There are pros and cons to each program. The cost is no comparison though. Mecway is by far the better value. I also like the Mecway GUI. Mecway isn't as good as ANSYS for many things. However, if you can use Mecway then there is no reason to use ANSYS. ANSYS also has many many other types of things you can do, besides structural analysis. I agree, the pricing is insane. I also didn't like their dependency on APDL. APDL was the original GUI (just called ANSYS). They never got Workbench to the same level and constantly had you go back to the original product. They then started making APDL just a scripting type plugin for Workbench. I don't know what they are doing these days. I got fed up with their dev path and them introducing stuff that didn't work (then waiting years for them to fix it). As one person, or even a small company, you have no hope of ever getting what you want in the product. All you get to do is talk to your sales rep and he adds your feedback to the computer. Whoop-de-do. The biggest thing I loved about Mecway was getting to actually talk to the developer. After so many years of never being heard, it was a nice change. Not to say you will always get what you want, but you at least get heard. Not just banging your head against a wall and screaming into the ocean. Given ANSYS history, I would be shocked if their new GUI was all encompassing and fully functional. With all of the products they have now, that would probably be close to impossible. They never even got Workbench to equal the original GUI (after decades of time). In any event, if you go with ANSYS you need very deep pockets, lots of training, and willingness to use many of their products (rather than just one). It wasn't nearly like that when I started with them. DesignSpace was an easy to use product, for individuals and small companies, and you didn't need any training to use it. It was also reasonably affordable. I think Mecway is pretty close to what DesignSpace was.

JohnM

I used ANSYS in the "old days", stored models on 9-track tapes (young people go look this up). I knew developers by their first name, and could call them directly. John Swanson visited our office to see how we were using his product. He was great. When they went public, a lot of that changed. Pac-Man acquisitions, a kluged-up interface that tried to incorporate disparate products, and a heavy emphasis on sales over service. In my last role I was pressing for a way to democratize the use of simulation, but the pricing structure made this absolutely prohibitive, and ANSYS was not willing to innovate on this. When I started my current role, I wanted to find a way to put tools on everyone's desk. When I found Mecway/CCX, I felt like I had gone back in time, to ANSYS early 1990s. Since then we have put Mecway/CCX on many desks, and all of the things I wanted- tight design loop use, critical mass of users, "democratization" fell into place.

Victor (like John Swanson) has always been responsive to our needs, and a lot of the features that are now in Mecway are a result of his willingness to listen to his user base.

barmin

I briefly used ANSYS (new version) and absolutely hate it. COmpared to FEMAP with NX Nastran or ADINA it seems weird/non-intuitive.

I like Mecway's approach very much, same goes for Strand7's- folks there are super helpful and more into the tool-developement than sales.

Sebastianmaklary

I used ANSYS as a student from 2015 to 2020 and I must say that I was very happy with many things but it can probably mostly be summed up to that it was fast. Being able to read native CAD formats, meshing sheet metal parts as SOLSH190 elements (continuum shells) with sweep meshing, automatic detection of contact surfaces and automatic mesh refinements was really good for quickly getting a good result but the price is incredible.

A full ANSYS License cost the company about a years worth of salary while Mecway is closer to a days worth so there were no way that my current job would get me an ANSYS license and if I hadn't been introduced to Mecway, I wouldn't have a proper FEA package at all.

Using Mecway takes a bit longer sometimes but it turns out that loading STEP files is absolutely fine and the remaining things where ANSYS is better still aren't worth the cost.