30-Second Summary
Why Traditional FEA Falls Behind
Traditional simulation is slow. Engineers lose time on CAD cleanup, meshing, and setup, with solve times stretching into hours or days. By then, design changes are costly.
What SimSolid Offers
SimSolid skips the prep work. Models import directly from CAD, with bolts and welds included. Connections are automated, and large assemblies solve in minutes on a laptop.
Proven Accuracy
Speed doesn’t mean compromise. Tested by Jaguar Land Rover and Renault, SimSolid delivers results within 3–10% of traditional FEA, but up to 100× faster.
Why It Matters for South Africa
Engineering teams here face tight budgets and deadlines. SimSolid enables early checks, rapid iterations, and efficient handling of large or complex assemblies without HPC clusters.
By Nico Genis, Simutron
“By the time your competitor is still meshing, you’re already reviewing results.”
Why Traditional FEA Is Stuck in the Slow Lane
Every engineer knows the drill: you brainstorm, model, then wait. Traditional FEA workflows demand geometry clean-up, simplification, and careful meshing before you can even hit ‘solve’.
It’s a process riddled with bottlenecks:
- Assemblies too detailed to mesh cleanly.
- Hours lost setting up contact conditions.
- Long run times — sometimes days.
- Errors that require going back to square one.
This delay means simulation often follows design rather than guiding it. And by the time results arrive, design decisions are already locked in — when changing them is costly.
Enter SimSolid: A New Paradigm
Altair SimSolid flips the model. Instead of simulation lagging behind, it puts analysis in the driver’s seat of the design cycle.
- Meshless Solver – no meshing, no geometry simplification.
- CAD-ready – import assemblies as they are, bolts, welds, fasteners included.
- Automated Connections – bolts, welds, bonded contacts created in seconds.
- Unmatched Speed – assemblies with thousands of parts solved in minutes, even on a laptop.
- Proven Accuracy – benchmarked within 3–10% of traditional FEA by OEMs such as Jaguar Land Rover and Renault.
It’s a tool designed for the way modern engineers actually work — fast, iterative, collaborative.
Watch this video to see how Altair SimSolid™ help engineers design smarter, faster, and with confidence:
South Africa’s Engineering Reality
Across South Africa, industries from aerospace and automotive to structural steel, mining machinery, and electronics face the same constraints: deliver more innovation in less time with tighter budgets.
SimSolid addresses this directly by:
- Allowing early design teams to run their own checks, freeing analysts for critical studies.
- Handling large steel structures (2000+ parts) or complex lattice geometries without HPC clusters.
- Enabling rapid iteration — multiple studies in a single day instead of waiting for overnight runs.
For South African companies, where every decision impacts project cost and timing, this isn’t just incremental efficiency. It’s a competitive edge.
Workflow: Side-by-Side
Traditional FEA vs SimSolid
Step | Traditional FEA | SimSolid |
Geometry prep | Hours or days cleaning CAD | Import as-is |
Meshing | Tedious, error-prone | Not required |
Connections | Manual, time-consuming | Automated |
Solve time | Hours to days | Seconds to minutes |
Iteration | Rare, costly | Continuous, real-time |
Result: while one team is still meshing, another using SimSolid is already validating results and refining design.
Watch this video to see Altair SimSolid™ in action:
The natural question: is it too fast to be accurate?
The answer is no. Validation studies show:
- Jaguar Land Rover – within 3% of conventional FEA results, but at a fraction of the time.
- Renault – 5–10% deviation, with 25–100× faster turnaround.
- Altair internal benchmarks – 35+ verification cases, with accuracy consistently within acceptable engineering tolerances.
The verdict: SimSolid isn’t just for concept studies — it’s robust enough for design decisions that matter.
Where It Hits Hardest
- Structural steel / construction – trusses, frames, weldments.
- Automotive – chassis, suspensions, EV battery packs.
- Aerospace – thin-walled skins, ribs, connections.
- Industrial machinery – misaligned parts, complex assemblies.
- Electronics – enclosures, PCB structures, thermal coupling.
If your assemblies are large, complex, or detail-rich — SimSolid thrives.
Simulation at the speed of design isn’t hype. It’s here.
For South African firms, where engineering teams are lean and timelines are tight, SimSolid removes the bottlenecks of traditional FEA. It empowers teams to test, learn, and iterate without waiting days for answers.
The question isn’t whether it works. Global OEMs already rely on it.
The question is: why are you still meshing?
To explore SimSolid in South Africa, contact Simutron.
