SolidWorks Simulation lets you test products for defects before they’re built, helping prevent errors early in the design process. It's powerful enough for trained FEA analysts, yet easy enough for product designers. SolidWorks Simulation can even help you optimize your designs for maximum performance and savings.
SolidWorks Simulation opens in the SolidWorks user interface, so there's no need to launch multiple applications. You can subject your designs to the same conditions they'll face in the real world, including stresses, impact, heat, airflow, and more. There's no need to wait until a product has been manufactured to start testing, or go through multiple physical prototypes.
You can use SolidWorks Simulation to answer questions such as
- will moving parts clash or interfere with one another?
- how much weight can a product carry?
- how much will a part deform under specific stresses?
- will heat and air circulate through the design properly?
- will it survive a fall?
If you haven't been using Simulation tools because you think they require a Ph.D. in physics, it's time to take another look. SolidWorks Simulation is easy enough for any designer to use, but still powerful enough to provide real, meaningful results.
Core Simulation capabilities are included with every license of SolidWorks Premium, and additional capabilities can be added as you need them. Three upgrades are available: Simulation Professional, Simulation Premium, and Flow Simulation.
Simulation Core
Assembly Simulation: Study the interactions of assembly components on-screen, before incurring the costs of physical prototypes. Simulate static or dynamic loads to evaluate your design’s performance under stress, strain, and displacement.
Simulate Welded Structures: Will your welded structures perform at peak operating conditions? Apply pressure, forces and bearing loads, then use visualization tools like section plots, ISO clipping and animation to review the response.
Tolerance Stack-Up Analysis: With our TolAnalyst tool, you’ll be able to quickly verify dimensioning and tolerancing schemes to ensure proper fit and function. It eliminates the need for hand calculations and manual entry of dimensions and tolerances.
Motion Simulation and Analysis: SolidWorks Motion lets you size motors and actuators, determine power consumption, understand gear drives, and determine how contacting parts behave. Check for colliding parts and output numerical and graphic data of the results, as well as animations of your tests.
Simulation Professional
Compare and Optimize Alternatives. Determine the best design option by comparing strengths, life, cost, and weight. Perform all comparisons and design modifications within the SolidWorks environment.
Failure Prediction: Save the time and prototyping costs while creating safer, more durable products. Simulation predicts structural failure thresholds due to yielding, overheating, buckling, and fatigue.
Simulate Drop Test or Impact. Save time and cost by reducing the number of physical tests. Define drop height, surface, and orientation. Perform realistic collision simulation between parts or assemblies.
Predict Buckling or Collapse. Virtually apply forces, pressure and gravity to your designs to determine maximum loads before buckling. You can study the effects of various materials as well as isotopic and orthotropic factors.
Simulate Heating or Cooling. Thermal analysis capabilities make it easy to study the effect of heat on your designs. Simulate thermal boundary conditions, fluid flow, thermal-structural interactions, and radiation effects in high-temperature applications.
Simulate Repeated Loading: Simulate, evaluate, and improve a part or assembly that has to stand up to daily use. Evaluate responses to varying speeds or frequencies, and estimate the design life of your entire product.
Simulation Premium
Nonlinear Dynamics: It's easy to test and validate your designs with advanced capabilities including nonlinear displacement analysis and analysis of nonlinear materials, as well as dynamic response analysis of parts and assemblies.
Simulate Plastic Parts: You can capture all the behavior of your plastic parts without special training or add-ins. You can also simulate your plastic components in all possible tests and environments, and optimize parts for volume and cost.
Simulate Forced Vibrations: Predict and control vibrations or dynamic responses in your products with a choice of integrated design studies, including Transient study, Harmonic Response study, and Random Response study.
Flow Simulation
Radiation heat transfer analysis: See how heat is transferred between high-temperature surfaces. You can also calculate solar radiation.
Internal flow analysis: See how liquids and gases through valves, regulators, and ducts.
Rotating reference frame analysis: It's easy to understand complex rotational flows inside turbo machinery (i.e., pumps and impellers).
Transient flow analysis: for simulating unsteady flow over time.
Conduction and convection heat transfer analysis: See how heat flows through an object.