BlogSimulationGenie
Will it hold? Stress, vibration and heat on CalculiX
DesignX now runs engineering simulation on CalculiX, the open-source finite-element solver. Hold a face, load another, run, and read the safety factor on the part. Genie can set up and run studies for you.
Before a part is made, you want to know whether it will bend, break, shake or overheat. DesignX now answers that in the browser, on the same model you designed, using CalculiX, a well-known open-source finite-element solver.
What you see in the video
- Inspect & Tools → Simulate → Stress.
- Hold the underside of the base, where it bolts down.
- Load the upright with 500 N.
- Run. The colour map appears on the deformed part with a plain verdict: Safe, lowest safety factor 7.82.
- Probe any point for its value, and open the report in a tab of its own.
Study types
| Study | Answers |
|---|---|
| Stress | Will it bend too far or yield under this load? |
| Vibration | What are its natural frequencies and mode shapes? |
| Heat | How hot does it get, in steady state or over time? |
| Buckling | At what load does a slender part give way? |
| Harmonic response | How does it respond to shaking at a given frequency? |
| Shock | What does a short, sharp load do to it? |
Why you can trust the numbers
- Checked against known answers. 33 of 33 benchmark cases, textbook problems and public NAFEMS benchmarks among them, land within 1 % of the reference values.
- Checks in every report. Each report says whether forces balance, whether the mesh is fine enough, and where a hand calculation agrees. It also lists its assumptions and limits, and it prints to PDF.
- Clear limits. Studies are linear and elastic: no yielding, contact or bolt preload yet. Touching parts are treated as bonded, and the report says so.
Ask Genie instead
You can also just ask: “Will this bracket hold 500 N on the top face?” Genie sets up the study, runs it, checks that the mesh has converged, and explains the result, with a design change to try if the answer is no.
Try it: open any part, go to Inspect & Tools → Simulate, pick a study, and add one fixture and one load.
