SolidWorks Simulation
I hope to put up a series of instructional posts regarding the analysis tools available in SolidWorks. SolidWorks purchased the rights to COSMOSWorks as well as COSMOS FloWorks and has since integrated these analysis tools into their CAD software. There are some advantages to having an integrated CAD/analysis tool such as eliminating the necessity to convert your files to an intermediate file format when you want to perform analysis on your components. Changes are immediate and automatic, and you can also avoid problems with file conversion from intermediate formats which are unfortunately quite common between CAD packages.
I have been working as an applications engineer performing FEA and CFD analysis for the last two years at this point and wanted to provide some tips and tricks that can be used to help perform accurate analysis on your designs.
While it is not necessary to have a full understanding of the theory behind FEA and CFD to perform an analysis, it does help during problem setup to understand what you are telling the software to do. Remember, Garbage in, garbage out.
For some basic FEA theory, MIT has an excellent paper about the fundamentals here:
Andy's Log 