MSC Software Corporation has released the latest version of its finite element analysis (FEA) pre-/post-processing software package Patran.
Patran is widely used for modeling, meshing and analysis setup for MSC Nastran, Marc, Abaqus, LS-DYNA and other solvers.
In the latest release, Patran 2019, MSC Software has focused its efforts on making its software more usable, with the aim of helping users to be more productive.
To achieve this the company has added the following features to this latest release:
Contact Model Checking with HDF5 Results Support
Patran now supports contact model checking features that were recently introduced to MSC Nastran. Users can now use Contact Model Check to verify if initial contact status has occurred before the analysis is performed. When the feature is enabled, Patran will automatically create an HDF5 results file so that users can visualize and precheck contact issues such as potential adjustment of the geometry induced by initial stress-free request, and so on.
SuperGroup Support
No, we aren’t talking about Bad Company or Emerson, Lake and Palmer. You’ll find no 8-minute guitar solos here.
The SuperGroup function in MSC Patran enables users to create group of groups.
SuperGroups is typically used simply for the ease of posting and unposting multiple groups in a single operation rather than having to select all groups of interest. SuperGroups is a special approach in Patran 2019 that can be used to easily and efficiently organize different analysis scenarios in the same model.
Maximum/Minimum Load Case Tracking
Patran 2019 now extends its capability for extraction of Maximum and Minimum across results cases/layers to make results more insightful. In addition to simply extracting MaxMin results, the actual Maximums or Minimums of the derived comparison value are retained and load case tracking results are retained to indicate to the user from which load case the Max/Min occurred.
Enhanced Group Mirror Support
This release, taking in account customization capability with uses Patran Command Language (PCL), completes the group mirror functionality for the mirror of Element and Material Properties and Loads and Boundary Conditions (LBCs) defined by PCL fields.
Crash Reporting System
A new crash reporting system introduced in this version, supported in both Windows and Linux platforms, is meant to help MSC Software improve the Patran application’s robustness.
Changes to MSC Nastran 2019.0.1 also enhance the compatibility between MSC Nastran and Patran.
Students can get their hands on the Student Edition of MSC Nastran with Patran (and other MSC Software products) at this link.
And if you’d like to learn more about MSC Patran 2019, then you can do so over here.