Creo Simulate Live vs Creo Ansys Simulate

[jwagh]

Please help me clarify:

So Creo has 3 Simulate solutions:

-Creo Simulate

-Creo Simulate Live

-Creo Ansys Simulate

Creo has 3 Flow solution

-Creo Flow Analysis

-Creo Simulate Live

-Creo Ansys Simulate

Is there a simple chart that goes through these differences? What are the benefits of each? What do users typically buy. It seems like Creo Simulate is an older tool, but the others are relatively new. Both Ansys Simulate and Simulate Live came out around the same time. Besides the fact that this is confusing (why do this?), it makes it harder on the consumer to figure out what to choose. It seems like on youtube, more people are discussing Simulate Live.

[tbraxton]

Do you have analysts at your company that specialize in simulation? Do you need simulation tools to run within Creo? What do you need to simulate and when during the design/development do you want to employ simulation?

Consider Simulate Live as a lower fidelity sim tool to be used early concurrently with geometry development (in Creo) by the design team to improve the design to the point that it would be handed off to an analyst for validation. It can provide near real time feedback to the designer while working on the CAD model to iterate/improve the design. You need higher end GPUs to make use of Simulate Live.

If you are purchasing new licenses for FEA simulation, I would go with Creo Ansys over Creo Simulate. This assumes that you need an integrated solution for analysis.  If you do not need an integrated solution then consider buying the ANSYS packages that you need. ANSYS has the tools to work with Creo models directly.

[remy · Accepted solution]

The following article breaks down the differences between these offerings : What is the difference of the Creo CAE product modules Creo Simulation, Creo Simulation Live and Creo ANSYS Simulation? https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/cs349429 

From the product presentation (and from the top of my head), Creo Simulate is our historical and powerful Mechanical and Thermal Simulation solution (formerly known as Pro/Mechanica).

Creo Simulation live emphasizes on the speed of computation by leveraging GPU, is developed in partneship with ANSYS. It enables to get quick views from simulation and make design decision on the fly (vs waiting for the convergence and taking the risk of not converging at all and other iteration common issues related to numerica methodologies).
FInally Creo Ansys Simulation is basically ANSYS integrated to the Creo environment.

[jwagh]

Thanks! This was perfect!

[Chris3]

To expand on this, the Creo Simulate produce as more features and because it uses P elements, is quicker to mesh and solve than the Ansys Simulation. Simulation Live which is also an Ansys product is an almost real time feedback but it has larger error bars and doesn't handle thin geometry very well.

Not to confuse, but Creo actually has 4 FEA solvers because there is a separate solver in the generative design module that uses the Frustum solver.

The legacy Creo Simulate product (formally Pro/Mechanica) is included in all licenses for linear analyses and should be the first thing you try. The Creo Simulate Live product is not meant to be a "sell off" engine, but is meant for quick design studies. Weirdly PTC also decided to include the assign materials to multiple components feature in the Simulate Live module which can be helpful if you have large vendor imports.

The Ansys Simulation product uses H elements and is probably a good fit for organizations that use the full blown Ansys product because the FEA models can be opened in the full package.

[cfdgeek]

In FEM method, H or P elements or HP elements are all classical FEM. Using polynomial degree larger than 1 does not lead to large error or hard to converge. It should converge faster than P=1 with smaller error. Because simulation error is a order of ~ O(h^(k+1)) where k is the polynomial degree. Everybody has H or HP code. Ansys also use HP elements internally.