Handling of assemblies for analysis is a subject that is growing in importance in the design and analysis industry. 
The ability to efficiently and accurately handle multi-part assemblies has been a large part of the focus of recent Femap development. Building upon existing functionality that simulates surface contact, the handling of component mating conditions, which define how components and subassemblies fit together and interact, has been significantly enhanced with the provision of more assembly constraint options, improved usability through automation, and visualization tools.
Femap 9.2
What’s New in Femap 9.2
Femap version 9.2 is the latest release of UGS’ robust pre and post processor for engineering finite element analysis (FEA). Femap is known for its tight integration with UGS’ own NX Nastran solver. This latest version of Femap 
continues a more than 20 year history of productivity and functionality improvements aimed directly at dedicated engineers and analysts. Significant new functionality in version 9.2 includes automatic contact detection and FEA model setup of contact between parts and components of complex engineering assemblies.
Also added is functionality that allows displacement and temperature results to be mapped to models of similar topology but dissimilar meshes for subsequent analysis. Femap 9.2 also includes a new Extend Surface capability designed to support thin-shell sheet metal and weldment modeling.
Further developments are described below.
Select images to enlarge
Automatic Contact Detection and Creation
Added to Femap 9.2 is an automatic surface contact detection capability, invoked after the import of an assembly geometry model. Femap will determine, according to a user defined tolerance, all the surfaces that are in contact, and can set them to conform to a predefined default contact condition.
A new Connections branch in the Model Info Tree is automatically populated with contact regions and connections, which are easily visualized, and edited if an alternative contact condition is required. 
Matching the new Model Info Tree Connections branch is a new top-level Connect menu, through which all surface or element contact entities can be defined and edited. Also, a new connection property library is also available.
New visualization tools that use model transparency to better show contact conditions clearly highlight master and slave contact pairs within a solid model.
Contact property definition has been further improved with the consolidation of all the various property definition types onto one Connection Property dialog box.
Glued Connection
A new addition to the portfolio of contact definitions is the glued connection capability that can be used to join interfacing surfaces of dissimilar meshes. The glued connection relaxes the requirement for a contiguous mesh throughout the model by allowing the direct connection of dissimilar meshes, and thereby greatly facilitates the meshing and modeling of complex structures.
This offers greater control with meshing and the choice of elements in models that have complex geometry. Areas of the model that are of particular interest – where high stress gradients exist perhaps – can be meshed with regularly shaped hex elements, and glued at a surface interface to the remainder of the model that may be meshed with tet elements.
Results Data Mapping
New in Femap 9.2 and NX Nastran 4.1 is the ability to transfer results (displacements or temperatures) and map them to a model with the same topology but differing mesh density. Applications that benefit from this capability include 
global / local analyses, which are based on the transfer of results data from a coarsely to a finely meshed model, and heat transfer to structural analyses that require mapping of temperature results from a coarsely meshed heat transfer model to a finely meshed structural analysis model.
Extend Surfaces
Extend surfaces is a new capability that adds to the mid-surface extraction functionality toolbox. This capability allows mid-surfaces to be extended to meet other surfaces or extended to a user-defined location or distance. It allows you to join disconnected geometry into a single model prior to meshing.
Typical applications that benefit from this capability include weldments or any structure that is modeled with the seams missing, and where the geometry is consequently discontinuous.
Graphics Enhancements
A new single-button View transparency option has been added that allows you to make your model transparent without changing entity colors. This is particularly useful when trying to pick entities either inside or on the back of a model.
A new transparent highlighting mode has been added that highlights entities within a transparent model where only the highlighted entities are solid.
User Interface
Numerous enhancements have been made to the user interface, including the following:
- To improve workflow and consolidate data entry, a number of dialog boxes have been updated to use a tabbed style, including File Preferences, Materials, and Connection Properties
- The Delete confirmation dialog box can be switched off (and reset again in File Preferences)
- A new Entity display toolbar has been added to facilitate entity display selection
- A new capability to create Layers from Groups in the Group Operations menu has been added
64-bit Support
Femap version 9.2 is still a 32-bit application; however this release can be run on 64-bit Windows. Also both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of NX Nastran are also included in this release. The 64-bit version of NX Nastran can access much more memory beyond the current 4 Gbyte limit on Windows.
Femap with NX Nastran Solver Enhancements
NX Nastran 4.1 brings many enhancements and improvements that will benefit users of Femap with NX Nastran.
- The enforced motion capability has been enhanced to include relative and absolute responses and provides a more accurate solution
- Temperature dependent composite support has been expanded to non-symmetric layups
- A cross-spectrum PSD results enhancement brings allows more response evaluation data for random analysis
- AutoMPC enhancements bring improved performance with better rigid element handling
- Smoothed contact pressure contours with improved contact pressure calculation algorithm for parabolic elements
Other Enhancements
Other enhancements include the following:
- Tet meshing workflow improvement with the Update Mesh Size dialog button added to the meshing dialog
- Preference added to select a Startup Program File / Basic Script / Executable to be run at startup or for every new model
- Preferences for Nastran solver added including control of memory, output directory and scratch directory
- The ability to quickly apply the same changes to many loads or constraints in the Edit commands has been added
Further additions have been made to the solver interfaces; please refer to the release documentation for further details.
Solver Support
Femap supports the following solvers:
- NX Nastran 4.1
- Abaqus 6.5
- MSC.Marc 2005
- LS-DYNA 960
- MSC.Nastran 2005
- NEiNastran 9.0
- ANSYS 10.0
CAD / Geometry Support
Femap supports the following CAD and geometry formats:
Format Parasolid 17
ACIS 15
STEP AP 203
STEP AP 214
IGES 4.0-5.3
CATIA 4.1.9 to 4.2.4, CATIA V5 R15
I-DEAS 9m2
Pro/Engineer 16 -Wildfire 2
Solid Edge 18
Unigraphics 11-18 & NX 1-NX 4