SimSolid is Altair’s structural analysis tool, which provides an alternative to traditional finite element analysis methodology.
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Written by: Will Haines, Director, Solutions Marketing at Altair

Altair SimSolid, Altair’s structural analysis tool for rapid design iterations, provides an alternative to traditional finite element analysis methodology. Rather than requiring model simplification or meshing, SimSolid uses a proprietary mesh-free method, which works directly on the original CAD geometry. Altair has been championing this software as a game-changer for early-stage simulation-driven design, so in this article, we take a closer look at these lofty claims with the inventor of the technology, Victor Apanovitch.

Benefits of Taking a Simulation-Driven Design Approach
“First off, using a simulation-driven design approach puts simulation right at the front end of the design process. It is the simulation that steers the design process, instead of just using it to analyze a final variant,” says Victor.
Many companies are finding that by putting simulation and validation at the front end, it drastically lowers the time it takes to develop products and get them to market. It also captures design deficiencies early to reduce late engineering changes which are always costly. This means that testing and prototyping are significantly less, again reducing development times and costs.
“Today, our brand-new generation of simulation technology used in SimSolid slashes the whole process time because anyone can do simulation early on and at any step in the design cycle.
You don’t need expertise, you don’t need a lot of resources to do it, so it can be done at any stage,” explains Victor.
Altair’s ever-expanding SimSolid customer portfolio comprises the very large multinational “household names,” as well as many much smaller companies, start-ups and academics located all around the world.
“The first thing to appreciate is that ‘small company’ does not mean simple or small designs. Many do pretty complicated things, but that makes conventional FEA simulation prohibitive,” Victor explains. “Even with a specialist on-board, nobody can spend months preparing a model. At best, if it is needed by regulators then they outsource simulation; that gets complicated to project manage and is also expensive.”
Removing the Risk of Defeaturing and Meshing
Irrespective of the sector, the industrial world needed a structural analysis solution that works directly on CAD geometry and gives design insights fast. With SimSolid, even structural analyses on large, fully-featured CAD assemblies are complete within minutes. It eliminates geometry preparation and meshing: the two most time-consuming, expertise-extensive and error-prone tasks performed in a conventional FEA structural simulation.
“Whatever design you create in your CAD system—such as an assembly, with different structural members, nuts and bolts or welds holding them together—with SimSolid, this is exactly what you use for simulation. There is no difference between geometry of design and geometry for analysis,” Victor says.
Early on in a design-development project, when a product is evolving, there is a need to look at different options easily—the “what ifs”—or make a change to a design. SimSolid is a valuable tool to explore those design alternatives, whereas doing that in FEA is a nightmare.
For designers, FEA is scary because the user has to understand all its special terminology, jargon and techniques, otherwise there are too many risks. SimSolid mitigates these concerns because nothing is removed from the CAD image; there is no meshing, just import and run as it is in SimSolid.
With SimSolid, the need to understand the complexities of FEA—which can overwhelm “normal” engineers—is gone. There is no longer a barrier of needing finite element expertise to run any kind of simulation and to get trustworthy results.
“You don’t need to know about finite elements or have years of education to get fast, meaningful answers from SimSolid,” explains Victor. “We’ve truly put simulation in the hands of engineers and designers—that’s what democratization of simulation is all about!”
When it comes to complex assemblies, there is no need for the defeaturing necessary to run a conventional FEA (such as to remove nuts, bolts and other connectors and non-structural parts) otherwise it will not solve. Leaving only the structural parts needs an expert to know what to remove and what to leave. Then there are boundary conditions, another piece of FEA terminology to understand and interpret to get a sensible result.
“I’m not even talking about meshing yet!” Victor says. “Let’s face it, nobody likes meshing, and we’ve all heard the saying “mesh or perish” because this is the most failure-prone stage. SimSolid has eradicated this risk totally because there is no meshing.”
New Technology Founded on Proven Formulations
At the heart of SimSolid is conventional FEA, but without finite elements. The new solver technology re-using well-defined FEA formulations means it has different approximations without finite elements to the solution—in other words, it is truly meshless, unlike other solutions. Currently, SimSolid offers thermal and structural analysis, but multiphysics capabilities are coming soon. Anything possible in FEA can be done in SimSolid.
“Remember, SimSolid is a new generation, unique technology founded on proven formulations to bring a unique product to design engineers,” says Victor.
When it comes to comparison with conventional FEA, SimSolid has proven itself in many benchmarking studies because the formulations and fundamentals are just the same. Compared with “integrated” solutions, which attempt to embed simulation into a CAD package to make it “seamless,” the only benefit is having a native CAD. The geometry still needs to be simplified and defeatured, and the CAD only eases that process. Meshing still needs to be done. Likewise, a high level of expertise is required to create a solvable model and obtain sensible results.
“We’ve seen many companies move away from using their integrated simulation/CAD packages to using SimSolid because it really removes barriers between simulation and design,” explains Victor.
So, will SimSolid totally replace FEA? While history shows that faster, better, new generation technologies do displace the accepted ones, there will always be areas where subdivision into finite element is required for fundamental reasons; for instance, explicit FEA schemes. Likewise, finite difference remains in fluid dynamics for some “heavy-duty” areas. However, SimSolid has the potential to take over big areas of mainstream analysis from FEA.
“That’s the power of Altair’s product range,” says Victor. “We offer best-in-class for mesh-based and meshless solutions. Coupled with our innovative licensing system, it makes everything easier and better because you can use whatever you want when you need it, but only pay when you use it.”
Easy to Use, Fast and No FEA Expertise Needed
Looking at the practicalities from the user’s viewpoint: Key is the ability to run simulation straight from existing CAD because SimSolid supports all common CAD file formats. If your CAD creates solids, and the majority of mainstream CAD packages do, then just import this into SimSolid and run your simulation with no defeaturing and no meshing.
Looking at human resources, while structural analysts may enjoy the process of doing FEA, their managers are usually terrified by the time and resources required, especially when 80 percent of FEA-related activities do not add value. This often makes FEA a “postmortem” to design, not its governing force. With SimSolid, there is no need for in-house or outsourcing to specialists to simplify geometries or mesh, because neither are necessary.
On the hardware side, whereas conventional simulation and analysis of assemblies are looking to HPC machines and GPUs, SimSolid does not need high levels of hardware investment. While many other product installation packages are over 1GB, SimSolid’s core package is around 50MB, increasing to 320MB, of which 100-150MB is Help and Documentation.
“Any standard 16GB Windows laptop is all that’s needed to get results in minutes,” explains Victor.
Desktop or Cloud, SimSolid is the New Normal
Today, Altair’s SimSolid excels on the Cloud because it takes orders of magnitude less in resources when paying for all the time to set-up, create and move data up, down and around. Live simulations of assemblies comprising 1,000s of parts are possible in one or two minutes, because Altair’s technology uses so few resources to simulate complex assemblies. No other companies can do it live.
“SimSolid on the Cloud opens the doors to true collaboration and accessibility,” explains Victor. “It is a native solution, and you can use your tablet or your smart phone to run it. Just open any browser, run your analysis and see your results. That’s a major benefit of the Cloud; that’s real democratization and it is the future.”
Over one year into the pandemic, COVID clearly has not gone away and will be with us for a while. This means the home office and working remotely could well remain part of the new normal. Cloud-based systems enable people to work together wherever they are in the world, to get projects up and running and keep them on track.
Some Final Words from Victor
“If all you remember is these five things about SimSolid then you are on the way to delivering fast, accurate feedback early in the design process, which means you’re equipped to meet the challenges of the new normal, and remain technically and cost-effectively ahead of your competitors,” Victor says.
- Don’t be scared of simulation: SimSolid makes it easy for anyone, regardless of experience, to have fun while exploring product design.
- Don’t simplify your CAD: Making modifications to your geometry for FEA can compromise accuracy. Let SimSolid perform analysis directly on your fully-featured CAD model.
- Explore multiple concepts: By performing analysis on fully featured CAD, it’s easy to test a variant quickly to gain confidence in your design.
- Simulating complex assemblies doesn’t have to take forever: SimSolid can analyze complex parts and large assemblies not practical to do with traditional FEA.
- Empower your design teams: Structural insights don’t have to be owned exclusively by expert analysts. Democratizing simulation helps shorten development cycles and improve final product performance.
“Now, that’s a game changer,” concludes Victor. “Any company—big or tiny—can now afford to do simulation in-house. The smallest of companies can now design and simulate without a specialist team or needing to outsource.”
“If you don’t believe me, why not try it for yourself!”
To give SimSolid a try, download the SimSolid free trial.