Does an article announcing the release of Granta Design’s CES Selector 2019 software belong in the CAD/CAE section or manufacturing section?
Normally, we would say it belongs in manufacturing, but the latest release of this industry-standard materials selection software has a whole bunch of new features aimed at additive manufacturing as well as at improving simulation workflows…so for now, we’ll keep it in CAE.
For those who have not used CES Selector before, it is a software platform that assists engineers in making informed material choices when it comes to simulation and manufacturing by constructing mathematical models for calculating performance indices and graphs (such as Ashby plots). This enables users to determine which material falls within specified design parameters.
Want something light and stiff, but cheap on the kilogram? Good luck. But put your requirements into CES Selector, and the program will draw you a nice graph that shows your options. They probably won’t be that cheap, but you’ll still see where your options lie in the cost spectrum.
The software covers the whole gamut of materials and material properties. Maybe you want a polymer with a high strength-to-weight ratio, but you want to understand the range of stiffnesses offered by a variety of polymers and manufacturing processes? No worries. Have another graph.
All the information is provided for you. And, of course, many of these selection processes are based on tried-and-tested methods of material selection, so those who have some experience in doing this kind of thing by hand or by table in a classroom will be familiar with the concepts.
What’s New?
So that’s CES Selector in a very small nutshell. What’s in the 2019 release?
First up, Granta has its own materials database thing called MaterialUniverse, which contains information on over 4,000 materials and 240 manufacturing processes—garbage in, garbage out, right? You’ve got to build a good materials database first—and Granta certainly knows materials. There’s also a medical version called Medical MaterialUniverse, which requires no further explanation.
If you want to export your materials data into your preferred FE solver, you can do so with the aid of the FE Exporter tool(see Figure 2). Export file types include SOLIDWORKS, ProEng, ANSYS and Abaqus.
In addition to these tools, Granta Design offers a Simulation Data Series of tools, which provides optimum material choices that can contribute to the early design and simulation process—before any metal is even cut.
Simulation add-ons include JAHM data, which includes improved material data for over 2,900 materials and a bunch of mechanical elements for generating things like S-N curves (for all the fatigue fans out there).
Granta realizes the importance of good data in the growing field of additive manufacturing simulation, and so it has made the GRANTA MI: Additive Manufacturing Package available. The tools within this package enable users to assess the effects of process and material variations on final outputs such as the tensile strength of an object. Pretty cool.
CES Selector is very good at what it does, and to be honest, there is nobody doing anything even close to it in this field of material selection. These guys are to materials selection software what Boothroyd-Dewhurst is to DFM software. The company is the big fish in a very small pond.
It should be noted that at that price point, it’s clearly aimed at small to medium-sized enterprises (SME) and larger ventures rather than being a consumer-level CAE application, but there is an academic scheme available for universities (which is where the author of this article learned about it).
Like BDM, it’s better than doing the process by hand. And the new release seems to be Industry 4.0 friendly, with all its additive manufacturing and simulation friendly witchery.
Altair customers will also be pleased to hear that Granta Design CES Selector is part of the Altair Partner Alliance, so you can access the software via the usual methods and have your company pay for it with HyperWorks Units from the company pool.
For the rest of you, you can check it out at this link.