Last week at my office I was given an entirely new fem tool to work on. I have already have experience on working on ANSYS and Nastran but this tool that I was assigned to work on was entirely new and it was the first time that I have seen that tool. So I applied all the techniques that I applied learning ANSYS and Nastran to get a head start into this tool.
As expected since the tool is in-house it has its own conventions and was out of sync with the other fem or analysis tools I have worked on. Moving , panning and zooming the models were all different, laying out of the GUI was different. In fact now as I write this I thing the layout of the tool was much better than hyper mesh, which uses radically different GUI… anyways since this is the software I had to work on for a couple of months now so I decided to dig in.
Before even touching the software, I took up the help notes and tutorials that were made available to me. I went of reading them, not line by line but reading through and stopping only were it mentions overall details. skipped anything explaining details. Took up all the tutorial and other materials that I had and scanned it. The main aim here was no bother about the specifics, but to get the big picture of the software, I learnt, the fem tool can be used for mechanical, thermal, vibration etc calculations. I leant about basic menu structure, what domain control is and how to set up mesh control. all of them by just reading through. I got a feel of the menu where each commands might be.
The next stage was to actually open the software itself and familiarize myself with the menus. Due to my previous exercise i remembered some phases for menu, dug them up.
After this took went to the open command and opened an actual model and tried rotation it…. tilting and checking it.
After having had a feel of the tool, getting a general sense of the menus, I called up my colleague who was already working on the program. I asked him to just give me user demo and do a small analysis.
Well the guy began and due to his eagerness he started explaining me minute things, some more in details, since my aim was to get a general feel and not to learn the details I asked him to just carry on the analysis without explaining. he went on while I sat behind and saw, and only interupted him at places where a menu command looked interesting or unfamiliar. This allowed me see how he began the analysis, what were the general conventions that any book or tutorial can’t mention and people working on the tool usually pick up.
After this tour, I stopped the work on the tool and took a 2 hrs break not touching the tool or any material regarding the tool. This allows the brain to refine the information that you already have provided it. It allows it the time to soak in the necessary info and identify the gaps that are still there.
So after the break I took one tutorial and began following it from step and low and behold within 25 mins I had completed the exercise with the same colored contour maps that are so common in fem software's. If I hadn’t done the previous one hour information soak and the required rest, this time to completion would have been higher and I would have stuck at many places..
After the results I didn’t stop there although the tutorial ended there. The exercise was over but the detailing following of excise prompted and introduced me to new menu items that I wanted to check so I went into the explorative mode and began exploring different results options that were there. Drawing graphs, seeing different contour maps, mapping streamlines, getting vectors of heat flow and many such. This exploration again expanded the knowledge and helped me in getting more of the next tutorial that I will do on my next meeting with this tool.
So what’s the take away from this whole exercise, if you want to learn a analysis or design software quickly then I guess this experience of mine will be great for you. Its not the first time I have applied this techniques but have used it to learn ANSYS, solidworks , Nastran, and VB. so take whatever you like and apply it in your own learning. good luck!!
Related : My 10 hours with ANSYS
