SimScale is an engineering simulation platform that aims to revolutionize the way engineers, designers, scientists, and students design products. The SimScale platform is fully cloud-based and is accessible completely via a standard web browser. The easy-to-use interface supports numerous simulation types including Structural Mechanics, Fluid Dynamics, Thermodynamics, and more.
The vendor says that SimScale eliminates many of the hurdles that accompany traditional simulation tools: high…
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Simulink
Score 10.0 out of 10
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MathWorks offers the Simulink product family including the Simscape physical modeling suite, simulation, validation, and testing tool set, a 3D animation module, signal processing toolbox for wireless communication, control systems, and event-based monitoring, to aid in the design of complex systems.
SimScale has a quick learning ramp. This is due to the excellent staff at SimScale. I've had interns in their 2nd year of a BSME degree pick this program up and solve some difficult incompressible flow simulations. They love it and I love that we can iterate so quickly on a tool that doesn't stop their other design work. We can run a simulation and get back to designing in CAD. We get notified when the simulation is done. It's great! Give it a try for free and see for yourself.
Simulink is a great tool for designing systems in the very early stages of projects. This lets you understand concepts and have a working model much faster, saving you time and money by being able to find errors really quick. On the other hand, when the projects reach a state of deployment you'll need to translate all the acquired knowledge and/or data from Simulink to the specific system you will be using. For example, you might design and validate a spacecraft propulsion system in Simulink, but when you build the real life model you will need to translate the designed algorithm/system to the actual code running aboard the spacecraft.
Learning curve for designing accurate models and getting useful results can be pretty steep for most people that aren't used to graphical based design and representation of systems.
Simulink requires a lot of CPU power and computer resources to run smoothly without crashing. Together with the MATLAB environment, a standard installation consumes a lot of disk space and becomes greater when more toolboxes are included.
Community for Simulink support and documentation is inferior to that of MATLAB and it isn't used as a standard tool by most of academia. I believe other tools such as Labview are far more common, making it easier to get help and find examples online.
I had a great experience with SimScale but we only used the software for a short period of time to complete the current design requirements. It is not a software that we would continually subscribe to. Next subscription event would occur when there is a design requirement to do so.
We chose to go with SimScale based mostly on capital cost. Competitors have a large upfront cost and also require expensive hardware to properly run them. Even their subscription cost is competitive with the annual cost of others.
Control blocks and more detailed algorithms can be run in Matlab Simulink. Simulation and PCB drawing of electronic circuit boards are performed in Proteus.
We've been able to iterate through a large number of designs more quickly than we would have without a CFD simulation, and also compared to the time it would have taken to prepare most other CFD simulations.
Affordable price, and it prevented us from needing to invest in expensive computing equipment.
Help from the support team also sped up the process of modeling different scenarios!