Having issues with Integration of Adams and Solidworks

[MehtaVivek]

Hello guys. I’m Vivek Mehta from Orion Racing India. We started using Adams from March 2018 however we are having issues with integration of Solidworks and Adams. Our college has bought the license for Adams. We even contacted the Adams support team and it has been more than 20 days since we had sent the mail and still we have got no response from them.
So our goal was to export the CAD Model(Material has been given to each and every component) that we had made in Solidworks to Adams/Car. The reason that we are using Adams is for Multi Body Dynamics(MBD) and to find COMPLIANCE. Apart from actual validation we wanted to use this compliance values in our simulation(IPG Carmaker) to see the effect it has on the vehicles performance.
Now we found 3 different ways to import this CAD Model into Adams.
1. Import your cad file directly into ADAMS with the extension IGES or STEP(but it assumes the whole assembly into 1 single component and then export it into ADAMS)
2. Parasolid file(which even though exports the whole cad but still the only thing imported is the geometry that is there is no material considerations...u need to input all of that directly into ADAMS...plus we are unable to save the whole assembly into Adams/Car.The Save As option just vanishes when we use a parasolid file.
3. If we import using solidworks animation we can only open it in Adams View. Since we can’t open it in Adams Car we can't obtain the results/values we need, that are only available in Adams Car. Plus another problem is the tire model,because while using Solidworks Animation feature, In Adams/View we saw that it only accepts PAC 2002 model...we tried importing 2006,MF 5.2 and MF 6.1 it said that it doesnt supports those versions...

Has anyone ever faced such an issue in the past or the teams using Adams just use the FSAE Template that has been given to them?
Is there any other software that can do both FEM as well as MBD except for Adams plus which software do you guys use to find compliance(except for Adams) as we wanted to use it in our next design phase or the teams just find the compliance values by Actual Validation.

Sorry for any grammatical mistakes.

[Tim.Wright]

Hi Vivek,

As far as I know MSC don't support student versions of Adams. You can try asking a question in the university version of the msc-forums.

Do you have any documentation on the FEM model conversion from Solidworks to Adams/Car? I've never seen such a functionality. The geometry imports that Adams/Car supports are not for FEM analysis.

To do this you need to mesh your parts and convert them into modal neutral files (mnf files). I've never done this but I believe Patran/Nastran can create the files you need. Then, in your suspension template you need to replace the rigid parts with flexible bodies which call the mnf files. If this is all setup properly then you will be able to run suspension and full vehicle simulations with part compliances. You can switch indivdual parts between flexible to rigid to help identify where compliances come from. You can also select which deformation modes to activate but I doubt this will be much use to you.

It's a big job, but in my opinion it's more or less the only correct way to understand suspension compliances in a rigidly mounted suspension in Adams.

To input the compliances into Carmaker you could bypass Adams/Car and make a FEM assembly of the suspension and apply the required wheel centre forces and moments to populate the required compliance tables.

Part compliance studies are always huge jobs though. If you want a career as an Adams/Car operator it's a very useful skill to learn. But in terms of developing your FSAE car, it's hard to justify the time investment in my opinion.