Pro/MECHANICA Tutorial Wildfire 2.0

By Roger Toogood

This book is written for first-time FEA users (in general) and MECHANICA users (in particular). After a brief introduction to finite element modeling, the tutorial introduces the major concepts behind... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1585031909
• ISBN13: 9781585031900
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Schroff Development Corporation
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.0" x 0.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Pro/Mechanica Tutorial Wildfire 2.0 Review

I've been using Pro/Engineer since 1991 full-time but had virtually no FEA experience. The author does a really good job of introducing readers to a wide range of Mechanica's capabilities. I went from cover to cover and had no problems knowing how to do all of the exercises and am now quite comfortable "poking around" in Mechanica.

If It Were Possible, I'd Give It 4 - 1/2 Stars!

This is a very good introductory text on using Pro-E with the optional Mechanica structural and thermal (conduction) analysis package. The author, Toogood, begins with a light overview of the finite element theory (non-mathematical) and ties in the Mechanica application. He illustrates how to use the various types of analyses available in the FEA package by walking the reader through setting up a problem (pre-processing), activating the mesher and solver, and viewing the results (post-processing). The written procedures in the book are, for the most part, detailed, complete, and accurate. Mechanical, fluidic pressure, and thermal loadings are discussed and utilized. Optimization and modal analysis (determination of natural frequencies of a body) are also demonstrated. Typically, two (2) or three (3) problems are posed, pre-processed, and post-processed in some detail within each chapter. At the end of the chapter are review questions followed by a couple of problems for the reader to work on his own. In general, this book does an excellent job of teaching the techniques of using the Mechanica application in a number of different problem scenarios. However not being a complete novice to FEA, I am unsure whether someone totally new to the field could get a sufficient understanding of the FEA background theory and limitations from this text alone. In other words, a reader might come away with the skills to setup and run an analysis, but not really understand the reasoning behind the application, the proper selection of pre-processor inputs, and finally the results. To this point, Toogood references the works of Paul Kurowski (among others) for a better understanding of the FEA technique. For those interested, Kurowski now has a book entitled, Finite Element Design for Engineers (ISBN: 0-7680-1140-X), which I found to be a useful companion to this text. If that is not enough, Toogood is available and relatively prompt and generous with assistance (through e-mail) for students with questions. For those wondering how much modeling skill is required, the answer is not extensive. However, a basic familiarity with Pro-E is needed. Although they are mostly simple models, the reader is required to develop all models used in problems from scratch w/o much assistance from the author (though models can be downloaded from a website, according to the author). Since this book discusses only the integrated mode of operation of Mechanica w/ Pro-E, importing models made with applications other than Pro-E is not addressed and may lead to difficulties, especially for the novice user. If I were to suggest improvements to this author they would be few, but would include providing answers to questions posed in the worked examples and at the end of chapters. In addition, it would be nice to be able to review his procedures and solutions for the reader problems at the end of the chapter (perhaps at a website). Inexplicably, the author does not include an index in the