Static and dynamic structural analysis of your product design The Finite Element Method (FEM) offers unique opportunities for predicting structural behaviour under both operating and extreme conditions, while avoiding the need to invest in and to spend efforts on building and testing prototypes. The competitive position of many companies has been improved by performing such analyses in house or by commissioning them to specialised bureaux. Solutions offered by FEM involve approximations of physical reality, whereas results can only be interpreted reliably by users having sufficient applied mechanics background and knowledge of FEM basic principles. At the same time actual lowering of hard- and software price levels stimulates tendencies to decide for purchases without realising the risks associated with injudicious usage. DESIGN AND ANALYSIS SIMULTANEOUSLY FEM based structural analyses computations have gone through revolutionary developments during the past decade. As a result throughput times of structural integrity evaluations have dropped by factors of ten and sometimes of far higher. At the same time computer hardware products have become commodity goods and their prices have dropped to levels everyone involved in this area of application, will be able to afford. Reasons for throughput time reductions include the following: The availability of low cost PC's featuring high clock cycle times and large amounts of RAM, virtual memory and disk space; Frontal solvers and other mathematical developments allowing for significantly faster solutions of large sets of algebraïc equations; Significantly increased graphics and the introduction of powerful pre- and postprocessers enabling to prepare virtually error free input data and to quickly interpret analysis results; Smooth exchange of data to and from CAD-systems, thus avoiding the need to regenerate geometrical information at any point during the design cycle. At the same time, when observing many practical applications, it has to be noted, that too many unnecessary errors and incorrect interpretations of results are being made, with the danger of FEM appearing unreliable. This may be explained from inadquate user education and time pressure. Too often nicely presented analysis outcomes lead to the neglect of a critical attitude when interpreting them. When performed in combination with CAD, where errors show obvious from what can be seen on the screen, one has to realize FEM is quite different of nature, since at best it offers an approximation of the real world. This implies reliable analyses can only be made when being sufficiently familiar with Applied Mechanics, while knowing about FEM backgrounds in sufficient detail. Despite the widespread availability of reliable software users sometimes show unable to come to correct specifications of boundary conditions, which is a difficult task even for experienced users e.g. when joints have to be modeled and uncertainty exists regarding which frictional effects will have to be assumed. Similarly, when interpreting contour displays of stress distributions, novice users often don't understand which interpolation procedure has been used, or how the software has dealt with e.g. lines separating areas with different wall thicknesses. The know-how and expertise available within MSE has been built up in performing software developments, consultancy applications and customer support activities during over thirty years. Software products have been carefully selected to meet high quality, broad functionality and competitive price / performance ratios. MSE's software and services are put into practice in educating, coaching and stimulating customers to perform analyses smoothly and reliably with the purpose of designing of cost effective products. MSE, Mechanics Software Enterprises b.v. has chosen to concentrate on providing high quality products and services, implying: Leading edge software products with proven reliability and many thousands of users world-wide; FEM training and education, required for reliable modelling and results interpretation. Workshops to gain hands-on experiences from processing practical applications are included; Alert user support provided by qualified technicians, some of them with expertise built up through over 25 years of professional involvement. All software tools are tested extensively, many of them using NAFEMS standard test applications and others by comparison with measurements on physical experiments.