I’ve seen a few posts recently which offered cheat sheets for things like Matlab, Python and JavaScript. It got me thinking that we don’t often get to see these for CAE and FEA tools. After speaking with a few people in the industry, I thought that we need a contemporary one for FEA, and specifically the MSC Apex/MSC Nastran workflow.
The number of Nastran keywords runs into the hundreds (maybe thousands), so I’ve focused on the most common aspects of model build, along with the Apex functions that will get you there.
It’s difficult to break the whole FEA process down into a ‘one size fits all’ recipe, but I’ve tried to cover the main areas you’ll need for model build for static and dynamic analysis with linear and non-linear systems.
So, here it is – a cheat sheet for Nastran model build within Apex, covering,
– View Manipulation
– Geometry Primatives, Create & Edit Tools
– Meshing, Meshing Control and FEM Edit Tools
– Loads and Constraints (including structural, dynamic, and thermal loading)
– Interactions
– Sensors and Instrumentation
– Materials and Material Dependency
– Beams, 2D, 3D and Sheet/Stack Properties
– Parameters and System Cells
– Keyboard Shortcuts
