Abaqus vs Marc vs Ansys

[j***@gmail.com]

ANSYS is expensive alright. We use a lot of those engineering software in my old company. We have expensive programs like Matlab, Solidworks and Catia. But we were able to cut back on the license cost by using software asset management tools. My former colleague uses Open iT ( http://www.openit.com )for monitoring license usage.He's an IT guy there, he's mainly using it for reporting and facilitating IT chargeback. He's also using it for negotiating pay-per-use agreement with the software vendors. They say the software also has license harvesting feature. I'm not sure if they have a free program, but i think they have free demo. Anyways the good thing about it is that, it works even without the license manager. Haven't tried it yet, but i maybe evaluating the Open iT software soon. Will let you know if it works for me.

[j***@gmail.com]

I have been reading all the posts and always I found the same issue. Abaqus suit for nonlinear, Ansys not. To start. I have been using both during years and I have to say that with Ansys you can handle most of non-linearity’s (al least with versions 10.0 to current). Maybe the difference could be some especial no lienar materials. But just one comment, going to industry level who has time to run really complicate nonlinear problems. Most are linear with coefficients. Both solvers are great. I would say APDL from Ansys is the best (easy and fast to learn with some programming knowledge) and Abaqus (inside ABauqs CAE) the setting is really good. But Ansys gives wrong results??? Ansys, I think is the mainly software used by General Electric. I have seen also really complicate nonlinear analyses with Abaqus with convergence problems. In the end, assuming simplifications make the problem easier and valuable results from design point of view. Because sometimes there is no time/resources to investigate when you go to industry level.
My experience has shown me that large errors come mainly from lack of material characterization ,loading and boundary conditions. These physics of the problem are more important.