MSC Apex Harris Hawk is the eighth release of MSC Software’s revolutionary new CAE platform aimed at making sophisticated, full-powered structural modeling and analysis capabilities easily, intuitively and safely usable by engineers and designers without specialized CAE training and expertise. This newest release targets the need for accelerated structural analysis in aerospace engineering and manufacturing. For background, see our MSC Apex Grizzly: Structural analysis for massive assemblies and MSC Software democratizes vibrational analysis with MSC Apex Fossa, both published in this blog.
Aerospace vehicles are some of the most complex structures to design because of the high levels of physics and mathematics involved, MSC notes. “CAE has been a key driver for reducing cost and accelerating innovation,” the company observes, “but current processes still suffer workflow inefficiencies, and results often come too late in the design cycle—especially when designing composite structures.”
“Unique composite modeling and simulation experience that closely mimics the steps of the manufacturing process”
MSC Apex Harris Hawk delivers what the company describes as a “unique composite modeling and simulation experience that closely mimics the steps of the manufacturing process.” Instead of using finite element abstractions, MSC Apex lets engineers manipulate physical representations such as fabric, layups, plies, panels and zones. Within a few hours, the company reports, MSC Apex users can become efficient with composite modeling and on-the-fly failure calculation.
“MSC Apex gives EcoFlight the tools it needs to fulfill many of our aerospace and motorsport engineering analysis requirements,” says John Wighton, Director at EcoFlight, an Aspen, CO-based organization that uses small aircraft to educate and advocate for the protection of remaining wild lands and wildlife habitat. “The composite functionality in Apex Harris Hawk embeds methodology and capability, which greatly improved process efficiency. We couple the advanced composites capabilities of MSC Apex with MSC Nastran to give consulting clients a flexible and fast capability at a cost-effective price.”
Key new features
Modeling productivity—This release introduces a new geometry tool for surface extensions to eliminate manual rework and to allow engineers to automate model preparation tasks. Generative tie connections for assembly creation now takes minutes instead of hours, MSC says. Users can now create large assemblies of parts using mesh-dependent connections while preserving the product structure. MSC Apex Harris Hawk also features a high-performing hex meshing tool to help users mesh complex solid geometries.
Complete structural analysis—MSC Apex Harris Hawk expands its structural analysis capabilities with support for multi-events static analysis. Users can now manage multiple load cases. It also provides the ability to define pre-stiffening in the linear bucking scenario. The brand-new model browser-picking tool better supports result processing for model introspection.
Open and complementary—Beyond modeling productivity and structural analysis completeness, MSC Apex Harris Hawk continues to build on an open and interoperable framework through a full set of Python scripting APIs for conceptual modeling iterations, and interoperability with MSC Nastran-Patran including export of scenarios.
