What's New in V2016 (April 2015)

This section highlights the new features and enhancements in Autodesk® Nastran® In-CAD 2016. Note that the list is not necessarily comprehensive. There may be other minor changes to the software that are not enumerated here.

User Interface

• Autodesk Nastran In-CAD workflow now operates in its own Environment within Autodesk Inventor, as all the other Add-ins. To access it, go to Environments (within Inventor), then click the Nastran In-CAD button. This adds a new ribbon bar panel with a tab named Autodesk Nastran.

Meshing

• The Meshing Progress Bar now shows all the details of meshing, like surface mesh and volume mesh with overall progress on meshing. In this release, the Cancel button responds actively.

Loads

• You can now apply a moment load on solid element faces by selecting a face and entering the magnitude based on the axis of rotation.
• You can now apply a remote force to your model. The remote force is a force that originates from a point located in space that is not on the model. You can apply a remote force like you apply a force on the model. The only difference is that the location of the remote force origin can be anywhere in space. You need to select a node or define a point, and then select it at remote force location. You can select surfaces to apply remote forces on. Regardless of the surface selected, the remote force will be distributed to all its nodes.

Contact Analysis

• Contacts are automatically created in FE Model using identified surfaces. To automatically generate contacts, click on the Automatic button on the ribbon bar under the Contacts panel. This command detects the contacts based on CAD geometry and the contact tolerance specified in the Analysis dialog.
• The Contact Type terminology now matches Inventor Stress Simulation terminology. Moreover, when you hover over the Contact Type drop-down menu, tool tips are available to show the Nastran terminology.

Results

• In this release, plotting the results with respect to nodal and/or element distance (XY Plot) is based on coordinate distance with respect to the position selected. You can filter the result data based on nodal and elemental results by selecting the respective node or element radio button.
• The Probe feature was added to query the results at any point in the model. To access Probe, go to Environments and click the Nastran In-CAD button. In the Autodesk Nastran ribbon click on Probe in the Results panel. Now hover over the model to probe the results. The values at a selected point will be displayed.
• Nastran In-CAD now supports automatic loading of results of previously solved models when entering the In-CAD Environment. To enable this option, check the Automatically Load Results box in the Default Settings dialog. Then when you enter the In-CAD Environment, the available results are loaded in the folder where the model file is located.
• You can now obtain Safety Factor results by defining the failure theory and the allowables in the material dialog.
• The default plot templates available now are von Mises, Displacements, Safety Factor and Deformed.

Other

• Selection filters are now added to all the Selected Entities selection boxes. Right-click in the selection box and you'll notice that Select Faces, Select Edges and Select Vertices options are listed. This will allow you to set and select only filtered faces, edges, and vertices.
• The Autodesk Inventor material database now loads automatically. The Material DB dialog has a Load Database button which allows you to browse different custom materials. You can select another xml/sldmat file from the hard drive and then load those materials.
• The units can now easily be defined in the browser. To access this feature, either click the Select Units button in the Analysis dialog, or click on Units: Default directly from the browser. The Units Settings dialog will open. By default, Nastran In-CAD takes the units defined in the CAD Model document settings. It supports different unit systems, such as SI, Modified SI, English and CGS:
  • SI – Meter, Kilogram, Second
  • Modified SI – Millimeter, Gram, Second
  • English – Inch, Pound, Second
  • CGS – Centimeter, Gram, Second

  Note: If the units are defined in the Units Settings dialog, they will only be used for that particular analysis.