Well, for MATLAB, i can say its help is great, i mean great. And i have only used it for 5 hours till now in my life and i can say confidently that given a chance, i will learn the software easily and can make it work the way i want.
But, unfortunately, ANSYS, doesn't come a wee bit closer to it, in terms of friendliness to use.
In my ten hours of its use, i have just now begin to get comfortable with it.
The menu's are different, the help is cluttered, commands not presented all at one place and difficult to begin with, are few of its shortfalls.
Unlike matlab's help, which expects you to be novice to it and takes you to the guided tour, ansys, lacks the lucidness, clarity and the initial interest factor for a beginner. Its much easier to begin and learn as you go in MATLAB than this software.
Few enhancement it could include are the first few chapters should be uncluttered, not much links should be provided and in the middle of the chapters do not provide information, not required now, put them at he end.
Well, a striking difference that anyone tinkering with this software will feel is that its passive for most of the time.
This was a striking thing that hit me while using ansys, which in case of matlab is exactly opposite. Matlab it active and very interactive.
Well, not everything was negative in my experience with ansys. Something were very intuitive like using this software it feels like you are setting up a display with all careful, definition and modelling and meshing and the final show is when you see the result. It feels like you are preparing for a magic show, with all those pre-possessing , defining and patient modeling.
The fact that i used, possions ratio, Young's modulus, coefficient of expansion and so forth and actually applied them in a software for analysis was another good thing i enjoyed. I always thought this was the stuff for books to scare us !!!! ( just kidding)
But the ultimate pleasure with this software is when you see your work, hours of modeling and meshing, give you the solution and mostly the animation that you can see.
Imagine making a truss and finding loads in each members automatically and moreover seeing actually how the structure deforms is a pleasure that you need to see to enjoy.
My ten hours in ansys were slow, but after getting results, i know every seconds i spend on it was worthwhile.