NeiNastran Software Review

FEA Software List ANSYS NeiNastran Mathcad

This FEA software uses FEMAP for it's pre and post processing and NASTRAN for it's solver. It is widely used in aerospace and automotive and the NASTRAN solver created by NASA in the 1960’s is trusted by many large engineering organizations for safety critical applications.

The graphic user interface of FEMAP is perhaps not as user friendly as others and requires some getting used to but it's functionality more than makes up for this.

With FEMAP you can import most types of CAD models and it has basic geometry creation built in. This is extremely useful for splitting up volumes for meshing and adding features onto imported geometry.

Pound for pound it is one of the best value FEA packages when functionality is compared with purchase and maintenance costs. It's ideal for dedicated FE Analysts but perhaps not the best choice for design engineers who would just need FEA occasionally. Design engineers may prefer NeiWorks since this is integrated into Solidworks.

Pros: good functionality / capability, value for money

Cons: user friendliness could be better