ANSYS Resources

Having recently joined the corporate environment, it was pleasant to see first hand, the kind of support that is available to customers via the ANSYS customer portal; tutorials and help files are readily accessible. Though a lot of the material is available online via other sources, the latest updates can be found via the portal.

ANSYS products are a commercial (and costly!) software suite and access to a machine with a working installation is required. I will try to focus on resources which are openly accessible and useful in beating the learning curve. This should minimize your search for good tutorials and provide a jump start; An ANSYS section has also been added in Resources, collating the individual resources mentioned on this blog. 

It is common in Universities to host tutorial files within their intranet and have the help files set up locally, rather than provide access to the Customer portal. The academic versions of ANSYS provide limited modules. There are other Universities and researchers who partner with ANSYS in releasing books and official tutorials that cover the ANSYS suite of products. It's important to know as much as possible about the tool that is being used to perform the simulation and generate the results on which we base our analysis.

The tutorials put up by Cornell University are time-less in the way they have usually been the starting point in academics. The above link has sections on structural analysis, CFD ( using Gambit and Fluent) as well as MATLAB. A great set of tutorials with categories starting from the beginner to the advanced level is accessible at the website maintained by the University of Alberta, which also has a post processing tutorials section, though the sections are focused on structural analysis.

Gambit is now a dated pre processing application; it may be more useful to get familiar with a commercial tool like ICEM  or even open source tools like Salome, Gmsh, Engrid. Pheonix Analysis & Design technologies have a periodic electronic publication called The Focus, which is available for free and all the past articles are also archived. This magazine has articles that are very useful and unlike the usual kind of articles that are found on the web, they are professional and meant for the general ANSYS user, with interesting aspects explored.

ANSYS.net is a highly reccomended source, both by The Focus magazine mentioned above and other websites as well. It also contains free to download macro's and tips and tricks regarding ANSYS. However, there doesn't seem to be much of CFD related applications in it. Writing macro's is also an important skill to cultivate, as it aids in automation and saving time.

One should pay a visit to the official ANSYS website as well as blog, which is more often focused on events where the ANSYS products have been used along with the occassional foray into emerging areas where ANSYS is being used. There is also a tips and tricks section which is useful. The free webinars hosted by ANSYS, on various topics are posted on this blog and it includes a tips and tricks section too.

Xansys is a ANSYS community portal that is fairly active. The forum seems more focussed on FEM related structural applications, which is what ANSYS was known for initially. The most useful feature and the reason why Xansys is being mentioned is the ANSYS Links page. A few of the links are outdated and don't work and the main links are posted in this article. This page contains links to the most prominent and prolific resources related to ANSYS, covering reviews, tutorials, product updates and information about other software applications and the industry as well. 

There is an active ANSYS forum on CFD-online as well, with subforums categorised based on products, like CFX and Fluent as well as another related to the Pre processing.

Additional Links :
(This section will be updated as and when I find new resources )

Quick Links

• ANSYS section
  
  
• ANSYS.net
  
  
• Ansys Blog 
   
  
•  Official ANSYS website 
  
  
• Tutorials - Cornell University
  
  
• Tutorials -University of Alberta
  
  
• Xansys - ANSYS Community Portal
  
  
• Xansys >ANSYS Links 
  
  
• The Focus
  
  
• ANSYS forum on CFD-online
  

See 'Additional Links' in the blog article for new links.