aPriori Technologies vs. SIMULIA

From my experience aPriori is a classical algorithm in data mining. It is used for mining frequent itemsets and relevant association rules. Also, it is devised to operate on a database containing a lot of transactions, for instance, items brought by customers in a store. Whereas aPriori requires high computation if the itemsets are very large and the minimum support is kept very low and the entire database needs to be scanned.

Incentivized

It appears to be evolving more towards large users with the 3D EXPERIENCE, while becoming less focused on small users like me, becoming more expensive and limiting the number of cores while most PC's now can easily run 8 cores. Of course it is great for non-linear and highly non-linear scenarios, and especially good at combing a huge variety of element types. I guess it is not best suited for linear analysis due to its high price, but even in this case you have to put in the balance the ability to make the best choice of finite elements and being so straightforward about actually using them.

Incentivized

• Give visibility to cost really quickly
• Be able to benchmark other regions of the world or other process/equipment that can be used to do the same part
• Easily visualize the Geometric Cost Drivers that are more important
• GIve some hints on where to work to get the cost down

Incentivized

• Create and modify designs from within the CAE environment. Although it has very basic capabilities, it is quite capable of generating 2D and 3D parametric designs. I have even generated some "fancy" designs which ended up being a challenge for draftsmen in specialized solid modeling CAD. I also like the fact that being somewhat limited, it forces you to stick to simple and effective design.
• Addressing structural instabilities such as snap-through or buckling. This was such a challenge when I started using Abaqus, I had to take a course on "achieving convergence". Coming from there, I can see how SIMULIA has become increasingly able to give you the numerical tools or tricks you need to achieve convergence consistently. In the past I often feared running into different convergence issues as I moved across different produce sizes, leading to changes in the analysis approach, which would make it more difficult to compare them. I just went through a 12-size family in 5 dimensional scenarios each, without a single issue after ensuring convergence with the first couple of sizes.
• Beautiful pictures. The post-processing of results enables me to generate highly illustrative, fairly easy to understand and elegant presentations, by controlling transparency and results shown independently on different groups, which I can select by material, location, etc.

Incentivized

• Dynamic itemset counting technique can add new candidate itemsets at any marked start point of the database during the scanning of the database.
• The transaction reduction method reduces the number of transactions scanned in interactions. The transactions which do not contain frequent items are marked removed.
• The sampling method picks a random sample from the database for frequent itemset. It may be possible to lose a global frequent itemset.

Incentivized

• Exporting sketches. For example, you can import dxf for sketches, but you can't export dxf. This is a major drawback for me, because I often communicate with customers through dwg or dxf sketches. If I can't export dxf, my sketches in CAE are "dead". I have to redo them in the dwg sketch. It is so inconvenient, I often end up making the sketches in DraftSight, so I can export them to CAE but I still have the originals in dwg format.
• CAE doesn't remember element type assignment by sets. Sometimes when I reconfigure or modify a design, I regenerate sets and surfaces, and this in turn updates material assignments, interactions and loads almost automatically. This doesn't happen with element types, so I often end up submitting a job with the wrong element types.
• Mesh regeneration and re-mapping in 2D within the job. I need this a lot to model axisymmetric assemblies with sharp indentation the destroys the original mesh. I had it in MSC/MARC and it worked great. Abaqus has it only for 3D. I have tried alternatives like lagrangian/eulerian and eulerian domains but it's still more complicated.

Incentivized

• Not to Lose the Position of Product Cost Management Importance
• Make Costing Simple and Ease
• Traceablitlity of Previous Costed
• Helps Design Engineers to actually look for the Which Feature contributes for the Most Cycle Time and help Design Engineers to re-design the CAD Model and look for the changes in the Cycle Time and the Machining parameters
• Interactive Cost Insight

Rating is due to below exciting factors which one can feel when we use aPriori;

• Cost engineer need to know "What the part "Should" cost?" instantly.
• One need to understand the cost in various Process group such as casting, forging, machining, additive manufacturing,etc...
• One need to have comparison of various process group in single window
• Ease of finding cost for various location for various currency in single platform

Extremely well organized and friendly, reflecting the latest approaches in solid modeling and adding the FEA part so seamlessly for the user. It's a joy to use. I'm aware some people would complain about the meshing capabilities and thus prefer using HYPERMESH. Fortunately not my case. I did wish I had HYPERMESH a couple of times, but for most of my projects CAE meshing is fine.

Incentivized

Overall, I'm generally satisfied with the response and results that I get from aPriori support. They are intuitive, and try to understand what it is I'm trying to do, or how the problem is affecting me or my organization. They also are very available across the globe, as my team is located in multiple regions.

I keep getting the feeling that it is drifting away from small users. I don't feel so comfortable with the SWYM community approach. I felt much better when you could just email or call HKS and you would feel like you were talking to a real expert who understood your situation. When I was reassigned to reseller in Argentina, which is like the other side of the world for me, I appreciated the cultural closeness, but I had to say goodbye to the level of support I had from HKS and learned to "support myself."

Incentivized

aPriori team helped a lot for the implementation, as they were on remote and helping for the file run and implementing the same on remote. aPriori team extrended full support for the implementation resolving the bottleneck and bugs if any during installing the software's also, they provide professional services in order to resolve some technical issue

Currently, we have not evaluated any other software since aPriori gives most of the things that we want. The kind of reports it gives has enormous information which is used in the discussions & for concrete decisions. Mostly the cost outliers are easy to identify if we take the parts of a particular supplier. The analysis can be used to provide insight for resourcing etc., which gives good savings for the company.

MARC can do the job from an FEA point of view. It even appears better at a couple of things such as 2D remeshing and surviving with highly distorted meshes. So I regard it as a very competitive alternative. I prefer SIMULIA because the GUI is so much better, especially the ability to create actual parametric designs in CAE. ANSYS doesn't cut it for me. I tried it for 1 month and I would see how much I would struggle with convergence in large deformation and large displacement situations with hyperelastic materials with which I have to deal all the time. Also the GUI is not as well built an integrated as in SIMULIA.

Incentivized

• It helps decrease our time to market. So more projects are done than before.
• Being quick to give a quote to a customer is a business advantage. Customers know they can rely on Soucy to get a quick quote. First in gets the business.
• No time spent on concepts that are too expensive anyway!

Incentivized

• I don't even bother doing an ROI. Without SIMULIA I would be pretty much out of business. Except for the fact that I could still have an alternative with MSC/MARC.
• Price is becoming a more difficult hurdle for small users. It appears I have survived because there was a 50% discount on my small 6-token package. Without this special price I would have to close my business. I'm currently exploring alternatives.
• A more flexible scheme enabling to add tokens over short periods of time or paying per use could be an interesting possibility.

Incentivized