ANSYS celebrating 40 years..

 

I have talked about ANSYS in this blog a number of times. Its in fact my first analysis software. I use it time to time in my work.

Its celebrating 40 years!!

Read the timeline of and the anniversary video here

Be sure to read

My ten hours with ANSYS?

Catia,Solidworks, NASTRAN, ANSYS they are just too...

How I learnt ANSYS, NASTRAN or Solidworks?

My fav method of learning and how it can help you?

Total immersion. Once I know I need to learn something, I let it flow
over me. I bath in it. I let it engulf me.

In NAL, by a chance work that I got from my mentor and boss, I saw the  power of VBA in practical use. This ignited my desire to learn it.

So that day I stayed longer in clocter, my lab in NAL, and browsed through the net in search of the stuff. I collected all pages that I could found. I devoured all the materials, understood very little of the things but I carried on.

Then at home, I fired excel and went to the vba mode and began ploughing through the help sections. I learnt a tiny bit of what I read but this process of overwhelming myself with so much materials, so much potentials softened my soil.

This process didn't teach me beyond how to get started in vba, but it showed and opened my eye to the potential that it had. This bath and total immersion in VBA material helped soften the soil and made my mind receptive to the lessons that I was to learn in the days to come.

So my advice to everyone of you is, if you are planning to learn a new tool, new language, new technique or language then take the plunge whole heartily and in the initial days bath in that tool, techniques, and process.

Don't worry about how much you learn just carry on and soften the soil that will eventually yield the desired crop!!

Well that was my method of learning, you let us know what's yours.

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Read more

• Tools of aerospace industry
• What should an aeronautical engineer learn? Catia or ?

 

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What is the History Of MATLAB?

Many of you know that if I am asked about a programming language for a novice who has never programmed before, I always suggest matlab. It shouldn’t comes as surprise that I love this tool. I had great time learning and developing tools on it in my previous works.

So here’s a little story of How MATLAB began and I want to share with you.

This story also highlights how “small side hobby” explorations, sometime take off in such a big way.

So ladies and gentleman , sit back and enjoy the fascinating history of matlab!!

In the mid-1970s, Cleve Moler and several colleagues developed the FORTRAN subroutine libraries called LINPACK and EISPACK under a grant from the National Science Foundation. LINPACK is a collection of FORTRAN subroutines for solving linear equations, while EISPACK contains subroutines for solving eigenvalue problems. Together, LINPACK and EISPACK represent the state of the art software for matrix computation.

In the late 1970s, Cleve, who was then chairman of the computer science department at the University of New Mexico, wanted to be able to teach students in his linear algebra courses using the LINPACK and EISPACK software. However, he didn't want them to have to program in FORTRAN, because this wasn't the purpose of the course. So, as a "hobby" on his own time, he started to write a program that would provide simple interactive access to LINPACK and EISPACK. He named his program MATLAB, for MATrix LABoratory.

Over the next several years, when Cleve would visit another university to give a talk, or as a visiting professor, he would end up by leaving a copy of his MATLAB on the university machines. Within a year or two, MATLAB started to catch on by word of mouth within the applied math community as a “cult” phenomenon.

In early 1983, John Little was exposed to MATLAB because of a visit Cleve made to Stanford University. Little, an engineer, recognized the potential application of MATLAB to engineering applications. So in 1983, Little teamed up with Moler and Steve Bangert to develop a second generation, professional version of MATLAB written in C and integrated with graphics. The MathWorks, Inc. was founded in 1984 to market and continue development of MATLAB.

From: http://www.math.tau.ac.il/~arielt/matlab/FAQ.html

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For everyone who is using excel, here's a little advice

For everyone who is using excel, here's a little advice from

I’m sorry to break this to you, but if you spend your time analyzing data and Excel is your primary tool, then you must use VBA. I’m not telling you should be a programmer, far from it. But you should be able to record a macro and make some simple tweaks. There are many repetitive tasks that can easily done using three lines of code.

Unfortunately lost the source of the quote but very true.

Here's the learning stairs route that I can suggest for anyone wanting to master excel.

1. Learn the 50 common basic formulae.
2. Learn the useful shortcuts of excel
3. Then go for recording small macros!
4. Then start tweaking it.
5. Next read more about VBA and apply it in editing your macro.
6. After this to excel help file and pour over it's documentation.

This are the steps. There is no direct lift to VBA programming. Learn this via this steps you will climb much faster.

Good luck!

Colour by numbers or a blank canvas approach

We all have began our coloring by using books that help us colour by
numbers. These magazines/books provided the sketch and the numbers and
we as kids fill in the appropriate colours.

I wonder how many of us skipped this step and went straight to the
blank canvas and drew something. Yes we eventually graduated to this
step but not before we mastered color by numbers.

Similarly when learning a new software, step by step tutorials are
the colour by number canvas. They give us the feel of the software.
It's after this steps that we move to the blank canvas, where we
formulate the problem from start to finish.

Colours by number is essential and should not be skipped. It's
provides the feel, understanding and the preliminary cups of knowledge.

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Some thoughts on learning software and time needed.

Excel has been part of my work life from nal days. From importing
cordinates to excel program to using excel to plot curves in catia, I
have done so many thing with it. Now I am fairly confident in this
software and know many things in that software from basic formulaes to
advance stuff. From simple macros to vba programming.

But all this I didn't learn in a day, a week, a month or even a year.
This stuff I have learnt over the years. I am still learning.

The point being, all softwares are huge. One can never know, learn,
and master them in some short period of time. You need to give it
time. So when you begin learning catia, nastran, or ansys, give
yourself ample time and if possible start early.

Fix a schedule with minimum no of hours of practice and then stick to
it consistently for a considerable lengh of time. This is the essense
of being a pro in any field.

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Find an alternative there's always one

As you might have already noticed, i am posting updates to this site
via my new phone. The interface of the phone is so bad that my output
has decreased drastically. So what should i do? I am hoping by the end
of this month i'll have a stable system and updates to this site will
be more regular. What have i learnt from this lull? This lull is due
to factors out of my control. I can't control my mobile service
provides, nor do i have direct control on the tool i use, so the best
thing i did, instead of cursing others, i am taking notes of the post
ideas that i have and will post them once the system is in control.
This has reduced good amount of friction and i'm productive even when
my tools fail me. The take away message is don't let external factor
derail you from your routine, don't let non availability of software
tools to learn what you want. Find an alternative, there's always one.

Two software skills to choose by an AeSI aerospace graduate

Here I am again telling you which software you can take up for your
skills and professional developments.

The tools I will suggest are not the onces I had enough experience nor
are those that I would have thought of when starting out just out of
AeSI. They are the suggestions from the experience and environment
that I have been for the last couple of years.

If you are interested in CAD, then shun catia, overlook solidworks,
take up unigraphics. That's the future. That's what aerospace industry
is using.

If you are interested in analysis, make ANSYS you vehicle of choice.
Start tinkering, and learning about it from today.

Well that's it nothing fancy. Not many choices, but just two specific
softwares to choose from.

Choose one today and begin devoting one hour each day on it for the
next two year, and you will not have to worry about job or career
ever! That's a promise.

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What's the secret of taking a great photograph?

What's the secret of taking a great photograph and why knowing that
will help you as an AeSI student and graduate.

The secret of getting a good photograph is to take a lot of them. The
more you take, the more are your chances of getting that perfect shot.
For some it will come at the 10th shot, or the 100th or beyond.

But what is important is taking shots. Same way the best way to learn
and perfect any cae software like catia, nastran, ansys etc is take a
lot of shot at them. Do them again and again and again and again.

Repeat a truss analysis, repeat a compresseor blade model. Don't just
stop but take action and take as many shot as you can.

The beauty about the digital camera is that you don't have to worry
about the reel, the developing. Same way, the cad and analysis tools
help you in giving you a virtual model or products, thus enabling you
to manipulate it to your hearts content.

So with minimum cost and fuss, you learn a lot. So when doing the next
session in ansys or catia, do become a photographer and take lots of
shots.

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What can we learn from my collegue at work?

A collegue of mine is complaining me everyday that he is stuck, he is
doing uninspiring work? He is not learning anything new!

I don't know about him but I see an opportunity there. I see time that
he can utilize to learn whatever he wants to but all he does the same
repeatative job at the same slow pace.

He is using excel and is doing the same kind of work for a year now
but he is poor in excel, by now he would have been fluent in that tool
but since excel is everywhere he disregards it. Shuns it. Hates it.

He is ignorant of simple if formula and of simple techniques of excel.

If this is attitude he approaches his work he will remain in the same
rut till he quits.

Its not what you do that will teach you but how you do something?
Opportunities don't come to ideal work, it springs from the laps of
challenging work.

So this is what I suggested him.
1. Automate your repeatative work.
2. Do the work at a faster pace.
3. Utilize the remaining time doing small experiments in excel.
4. Read more about the tool you are using.
5. Aim to be an expert in it.
6. No tool is unimportant.
7. Your value is not it the number of tools you know but in the things
you can do with the tools you know.

I wish I could do some more for him. But I know he is the one who has
to walk. All we, as external person, can do is point him the right way.

As always I am curious what do you think?

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Teach yourself methodlogies and process not the tools

Teach yourself methodlogies and process not the TOOLS!

When learning a new software tool, be it a CAD software or a analysis
tool, keep reminding yourself of this. Learn the methodology and
process not the tool. Learn why something is happening than how.

Delve deeper in different boundary conditions and domains than just
blindly applying them repeatedly on models. Understand the difference
and significance of different elements before choosing one over the
other. Understand the different ways of loft before applying it in a
cad model.

It's very easy to loose sight of wood for the trees. But keep your
mind alert and know what you are doing and do what you know. Anything
else is just wasting time and resource.

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Why riding on road really works?

A few days back I made a post regarding how riding on a road improves
your driving than practising it in open grounds. I used the same
analogy to learning catia, solidworks, unigraphics, ansys , and
nastran etc.

I laid out steps that one can take so that even without a real life
example, one can accelerate one's learning of a cad or cae tool.

Here in this post I will discuss why it works?

Why riding on real roads really work?

1. It puts you out of the leisure zone.
2. It presents you unexpected turns.
3. It puts you on the real test.
4. It focuses you not on results but on the process.
5. It presents the situation where you need to apply your knowledge at
every turn.

Same applies for learning a tool. Be it a cad tool like catia,
solidworks or unigraphics or be it an analysis software like ansys,
nastran, fluent etc.

The main advantage is that you disregard the nonsense, superficial
stuff and do the things that's essential and important.

Changing gears at every corner is a skill that one learns when he is
on a real road facing real traffic, same way, while doing a software
with real world examples one learns of different constraints that
never appears while practising a tutorial. And this constraints and
limitations enables you to think and solve the assignments in creative
ways.

So next time you sit to learn a software tool, shun the off repeated
tutorial. Challenge yourself to make something that you can share with
others. Challenge yourself to make something that others will find
usefull. And begin making it. This will teach you 100 times more than
following the steps of 100 tutorials!!

Try it!

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Riding bike and learning catia what's the connection?

Until you ride bikes on real road, you won't learn it. It's 100% true
for learning to drive a motorbike. And more so for all the software
tools.

Until and unless you are working on a real project you won't learn the
tool. You may know how to use it but driving on the highway, with real
traffic is the place which will hone your skills as a driver and in
the same way on a tool.

But tutorials is what I have, I hear you say. Well then create some
mini challenges. Challenges to produce something worth sharing. Here's
few idea for anyone learning a cad (catia, solidworks, unigraphics
etc) program.

1. Select a place in your house, let's say the bathroom and create all
the bathroom assessories that you see in it in your chosen cad
program. Design from start to finish and present 2d drawing just ready
to be manufactured. Design with an intention of sharing all your model
and cad drawing sheets with the world. Post them online. Let that be
the real project you are working for.

2. Design a bicycle from scratch. Measure one and assemble a whole
unit in your chosen cad program. Make drawing sheets which enables
someone with the drawing to built the bicycle from ground up.

Well I can go on but I will stop here and let you decide how you want
to create your own challenge.

The key thing in this whole exercise is your commitment to share your
results. When you design and cad model with that intention, you will
be in the very state of mind that actual designers are. It's just like
riding on a real road.

In my next post, I will discuss why this method works and things to
remember while doing this kind of exercises.

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Two Professional development programs in and after AeSI

Two programs that you should keep an eye on for your professional
development in and after AeSI.

One is iisc's short term proficiency courses that are conducted twice
a year. The courses are on fem, project management and many other cfd,
and engineering related topics. The courses mostly deal with theory
and strengthing concepts!!

Second short term courses are from MSRSAS. They come up once a year
and are more inclined towards tools like Catia, unigraphics, ansys,
nastran, fluent etc. !!

Right now my Internet access is next to nothing, so I won't be able to
offer any direct link to both of this. But google it, google still is
as good as it was in finding things. :)

Well this two were the one I knew and had some practical knowledge
about. If you know something else please do include them in comnents!!

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given below

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Which software to use? Advise to AeSI aerospace students!

In my previous post, I highted 3 softwares that I will recommend to
any propulsion (aerospace) engineer entering the industry. Though I
mentioned three specific softwares but they are certainly not the only
one used in the industry.

Those 3 were the softwares that I will take up if I were a fresh AeSI
graduate today.

Every organisation uses many different softwares. Even CAD, CAE
softwares vary from department to department. And these softwares also
change with each year.

I have seen catia replacing unigraphics and again next year catia
replaced by a brand new cad program in my department. So don't fret
about the softwares too much. They change like governments!

Start with whatever options that are available to you. But be
consistent. Consistent in putting in your time, consistent in sitting
with the software every day. Consistent in learning the tool.

Always remember, no matter what software you use, study or practise,
It's YOU who will matter ultimately in your design and analysis.
Softwares are just the tools that enable you to weive the magic!

5 lesson learnt from writing the ebook.

The ebook is ready. I like the way it finally came out. Now all that
is required is to setup the system so that it's available to everyone
for whom it is intended.

At the begining of the task I didn't realize that it was such a big
task. But it turned to be one. Here are 5 lessons I learnt in
compiling this ebook.

1. Plan ahead.
The ebook saw the light because I had planned ahead. I broke the
project into series of steps and I did try to do each one at a time.

For the ebook, the main tasks were gathering the material from the
blog. Organising the material, formating, making PDFs and finally
launcing.

This were the high level steps, which were furthur broken down to
smaller tasks to get the work done.

2. Get maximum done in the intial push
This was perhaps the best thing I did for this ebook project.

Downloading some selected, related content from 750+ post of my-aesi!
I utilized the initial enthusiasm for the ebook to acomplish this
tasks within days of setting the goal to finish this project.

Since I have limited time and limited access to net, so this motivated
me to push through and I did the first two tasks of getting the
content and organising them fairly quick.

3. Keep off topic when stuck
After the initial two tasks, came the formating and this gave me
headaches. Literally I never thought formating will be so difficult.

I have written countless documents for office but never had any
formatting issue but this was not the case with this ebook.

I was stuck and it is at this stage of the ebook, I had doubts and I
wanted to scrap the whole project.

Here I just let go off the project and let it lay down low in my daily
tasks. I thought of ways to format and tried different formating
styles in word but never touched the ebook. I was incubating ideas. I
was waiting for inspiration. And I didn't wait in vain. Eventually I
did felt like picking the ebook and went with the first formating that
came to my mind.

Well it was not perfect but I tweaked and tweaked and got something I
liked.

4. Formating is the not trivial
As I found formating is not trivial. This was the greatest lesson for
me. Yes I have authored many reports and document but there was none
that big and as wordy as this project. The reports at office had
tables and graphs and some text sandwiched. But in this ebook text was
the bread. So had to learn few formating tricks!!

5. Chip in daily.
In the initial stage, enthusiasm of a big project sailed me through
two of the major tasks. But as I moved to next stage, the enthusiasm
eroded. The engine stopped.

This is were self discipline came handy. I had set an hour a day for
this project and even when I didn't feel like I have any desire to
work on this project, I chipped on.

I didn't feel like taking up the ebook, but I began tinkering with the
formating with some dummy reports. I began researching on the tools to
convert doc to pdf.

So even when I didn't do anything directly for the project, indirectly
I kept chipping. This not only help me save the project but made me
more confident in word and showed me numerous ways to convert word
documents to PDFs.

This were the lessons I have learnt in writing this ebook. I hope you
will pick up something from this experience.

I am at the final stage of launching the ebook. Do bear with me some
more. Hope you will like the ebook and find it useful.

Learn A software as if it's 20-20

A collegue of mine was recently telling me how they learnt and had the
matlab experience. He was in iit chennai. There one professor, one day
came and said he will give them one test problem and they have one
week's time and all of them have to solve it by using matlab.

Now before that no one had any exposure to that software, they have
never seen it and all of a sudden they have this assignments which
required them to program in matlab to plot the graphs and it was the
only mandatory criteria for the exam. So what do you thing happened?

The whole class geared up and did a quick crash course on the software
by the end of the timeline and everyone had the results ready. From
the professors side there was no restriction for them, they can use
internet or books if they want, all he wanted was the matlab code and
the results. He got all. For the students the challenge provoked them
to learn the software in quick time. Yes they didn't learn it fully
but they got to learnt it so that, if they are asked to do it again
they will be able to produce a result from matlab.

What are the lessons we can learn from this?

Don't bitch around for lack of tutors for a software, even in iit's
it's your initiative that helps you learn, tools come from the
institution but it's the students who have to roll the ball. So accept
the opportunities of learning a tool as you get them, don't wait fir a
teacher or a ready made tutorial!!

This time limit propelled the students to cut the crap and get down to
the core of the software. Since they had results to deliver they
played like 20 20 instead of a test match. So whenever you are
learning a new software tool, Remember 20 20!

That's the fasted way to learn.Concentrate on scoring on each bowl.

For my collegue, as he mentioned, that experience was just the brush
with matlab that he had, but for some, this little exercise stuck and
they went deep into the software to learn to use it more effectively.

So next time you are planning to learn something new, make it a 20-20
rather than a test match!!! Good luck.

Catia and solidwork

These are two cad software that i have extensivled covered in this
blog. I became aware of them only when I was in my last semester of
aesi and only saw solidworks for the first time when I joined NAL and
actually used catia 6 months latter.

I have worked with solidworks to design and cad model India's first
mixed flow compresor!

At present, I don't use any of this software. And I am doing fine in
life, in my career. So what the point in all this

The point is do whatever software that comes your way, because
ultimately many more software will flow in to your life. It doesn't
matter what software you get in training or what project you work on.
The point of software is they are just tools to an end. They are good
to have but they only work when you can apply them.

So whatever you are doing don't be bothered about these tools, there
are many and you don't have to learn all of them. Just carry on the
ones you enjoy and work on.

In the end it's your knowledge, wisdom and judgement that will matter
not the tools.

4 function key excel shortcuts that help me in my work

Whatever you use, be it catia, solidworks, UG, NASTRAN,ANSYS ,PATRAN, HYPERMESH or any other CAE software, excel is one of the software tool that always be the one that will be come to you. Maybe for preparing some graphs or presenting the data from the analysis. For my work excel is tool that i use everyday ion my office. so today i would like to share some of 4 function key shortcuts of excel that has made my life easy.

F2 the second most used key for me. If you want to edit a cell value. This is the key to use. Instead of double clicking F2 comes handy to edit those long formulae's.

F7  spell checker. My spellings are bad, even in spread sheet I manage to get many spelling mistakes, so one click on F7 I the best that I can get.

F4 is the most versatile function key of excel. I use it the most. It repeats your last action. So this can be used for many task. Since there no fix action. so its programmable to use any action. If I have to delete a row. repeatedly. I select the row and then right click on it and choose delete. after than any row I want to delete I just choose that row and press F4. similarly if I have to clear lot of stuff from one sheet. I use the F4 key instead of right click and choosing clear contents multiple times.

F11. Most of the time my work in excel involves making graphs of the data and f11 comes to the rescue. just select the data and press F11. You will have the default graph plotted. Since I want a particular type of graph so I always make a default graph and use it every time I need a graph.

Do you have any shortcut keys then please do share it with me.

Have you found Free magazines?

A few posts back i posted about how to use this blog effectively. I don't know about i fired up my browser and tried few combinations to see what i'll get from the blog and this try brought me couple of blog entries that i did regarding free aerospace magazine on net. It also landed me to the post that points to an online ansys magazine.

Want to see the links?

Here it is http://my-aesi.blogspot.com/search?q=magazine+free

my experiments showed me this links once again. What have you found? Do try!