In '09 a seat of Premium was $11K. There have been some discounts with full on maintenance cost. It climbs from there to Simulation. I was able to do some good work with it at the time. I no longer have much use for it so I have lapsed. If you really have work, it is worth it, but it is way too costly for just playing and learning.
Thanks for the info. I suppose for that kind of money it would make sense to get consultancy instead for the occassional little job.
It has a learning curve too. That depends on how much familiarity you have with FEA. It was the first time I ever used FEA, and I took a class to get going (another couple K). I was only interested in the basic, static mechanical FEA, none of the other modules. Strain, stress and deflection. In case you have not ever done this, there is quite a lot to know about applying constraints. Or perhaps even better, how not to apply constraints. It really is simulation. You need to isolate the pertinent parts of an assembly, or model them specially to simplify what in the real world is significantly more complex. There should be a fair amount of trial and error, where you experiment with the model to make sure the results make sense to you. A very detailed model can throw some spurious hot spots at you. In areas of very high strain, you need to have doubts the results are realistic. Mostly you design for deflection anyway. You will get a "lot" of movement before failure, probably more than you you can live with. It will creep you out to walk across a flexy floor long before it breaks. (Think Tacoma Narrows Bridge.) If you are going to try to make money with it, SW has added some nice features. The integration with the modeler is very nice. You can very quickly make changes to a constrained model, then mesh and see the results. And, the report writing can be a boon. You might be surprised how much time it takes to present results well and there is a lot of help for this. I really enjoyed my time with it. But, I never made any money for the effort. I probably learned more, and did a better job than I would have hiring it out. Finally, if you do hire it out, make sure the person you contract with is smart and experienced not just intelligent. With SW FEA you can make results easily. So, do the results mean anything? Do they really help you optimize a design in meaningful and safe ways? The person you hire should be able to discuss how the analysis might be screwed up. Discuss the possible avenues of optimization to be investigated There are disadvantages as well as the advantages to FEA. They should be able to have a conversation before they start about this. See if when they look at your proposal they have a plan forming. And after, they should have some misgivings, or things to look out for when making the actual parts and field testing them. You want someone to have done more than make rainbow colored pictures.
It cost has much as SW pre regarding wich package you need. CFD still remains expensive tought. However qualty rocks. There is really nothing that a small team can't do in classic mechanics. Howevet my experience is that the market is still unaware of how you can perform. Mosly the matket sticks to 3d design only. Sad as it is.
Depends upon the package you require.Though you can check this link for more facts about this: http://www.solidworks.com/sw/education/cad-faq-students.htm
