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Best motion simulation software for linear actuators or motors
February 29, 2020

Best motion simulation software for linear actuators or motors

Ed Danzer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Altair Inspire

We are a small company that designs and build products using actuator and motors. Some are simple where weight is not essential, and the forces are not high, so simple math and sketches will provide adequate product design information. Some of our products are very weight sensitive and have more complex movements and loading cases. These products demand to do finite element analysis before any building gets started. The problem we ran into in 1996 was defining the forces and force vectors to put into the FEA software to get usable results. Over the years, we have tried several different kinematic simulation software with marginal results.
  • Defining the actuators, pin joints, sliding joints is very easy.
  • Defining a motion sequence is straightforward.
  • The UI tends to make you follow a sequence of steps to be successful in doing a motion simulation and finite element analysis study on a design.
  • The motion simulation results are automatically transferred to the FEA solver.
  • Currently, we have to import the SOLIDWORKS assembly and reposition it in space.
  • Currently, there are no mesh refinement capabilities.
  • We have completed a proof of concept product for disabled people that will be a new market area for our company.
  • We are expanding the number of special projects we will do every year that requires motors and actuators.
  • The only negative is being busier means expanding at a higher rate than expected.
Working Model, MathCad, Dynamic Designer, Algor, and Mathlab had poor UI's and poor ways to define actuator and motor motion profiles. The force results and vectors were not easy to input into the FEA software. SOLIDWORKS Motion does not have an excellent way to define a linear actuator or its motion profile.
Altair provides a UI that guides you through defining your linear actuator or motor's motion profile quickly.
When I needed clarification on how do use a feature or best way to define the constraints for a design problem, the response was quick and solved my needs.

Do you think Altair Inspire delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Altair Inspire's feature set?

Yes

Did Altair Inspire live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Altair Inspire go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Altair Inspire again?

Yes

For any smaller company developing products that use motors and actuators to do work and need the best of class performance, Altair Inspire is the simplest to learn to use. Our first project required building booms to handle an offset load. I could not get SOLIDWORKS motion to simulate the movements to be done. It took less than 8 hours to fully define and run the first simulation to find excavator type boom design was not going to be light enough or rigid enough for the product.