Machine design and finite elemental analysis

SketchUp Pro
#1

Ok, so one of my upper division classes this semester is taking all 5 of my physics and dynamics classes and shoving it into a machine design and mechanics of materials class. I have to use a cad program to create whatever machine i want, however, the catch is, i have to do some finite elemental analysis on the individual parts. FEA is testing for stress under load, torsion, etc

Is their a extension for the pro version of sketchup that can do this? all parts must be solid and tested to receive credit.

here is an article on fea if you need it:

thanks

#2

Solid Thinking bought TheaRender, which has an extension in SketchUp, but they have not made an extension for their fea or topology algorithms.
Ir does have the same ‘intuitive’ tools as SketchUp, you might want to try/investigate.

They have student licenses.

2 Likes
#3

This was the first hit when googleing “finite element analyses SketchUp”…

1 Like
#4

Thanks for the link. ill take a peek at it and see what i find

#5

ill check this out as well. thank you

#6

Cognitive information, you gave me an idea. Thank you.

#7

Ive been up for hours trying to figure this out. Possible solutions i have found.

First, stl, or whatever file, needs to be either converted into a stp, iges, or fea mesh.

Freecad does an ok job at converting stl to a solid and then running fea or fem on it via freecad

Another option is to use meshlab or gmsh to convert stl to an fea volume mesh.

Meshlab will convert stl to a step file, then gmsh will convert it to a fea mesh and run fea on it.