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Originally Posted by ChrisH
The first part isn't necessarily true, but the second sure is. How long an FEA takes all depends on the level of detail in your model. For FIRST robots a coarse model of a 100 or so nodes or less should be adequate. Such a model should run in a couple of minutes on all but the most ancient PCs.
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Ummm... heh. I'm all with you that a robot COULD be modelled with 100 nodes if you're using nifty beam and plate elements and such, which I'm sure is what NASTRAN loves to use. In fact, I agree that ideally the robot should be modelled this way since it saves so much on computing power.
Neal was asking for an FEA package that would integrate with Inventor, though. This kind of FEA package rather stubbornly uses brick elements to represent the solid model and just throws a ton of computing power at the problem, unless FEA packages have advanced greatly in the last few months.
But yes, the practical upshot of all this is that a good textbook or junior MechE is a rather lot cheaper and safer than FEA. Heck, most college students will probably work for food. I know I do.