You have bought the Autodesk Product Design and Manufacturing Collection and you are in need of doing an FEA simulation but are posed with the question of which software to do it in. Inventor FEA or Inventor Nastran?

One of the first questions I would ask is whether you need to do linear or non linear analysis. If it is non linear then Inventor Nastran is the way to go as the Inventor FEA is not able to perform any non linear analysis.

If it is a simple part with linear static analysis either or will suite your model. They are both good and will give similar results. The same for normal or frequency analysis. Both software packages will be ableto do the job and give similar results. Anything outside of those 2 analysis types you will need to do in Inventor Nastran.

When doing an analysis for assemblies, both are pretty good except for where you start to mix the different type of meshes (body,surface or line) in the same assembly. Inventor FEA is good if there is one type of mesh but if you start mixing say for instance surface and line elements then you will have a problem. This is where Inventor Nastran is very good and will analyse those components very efficiently and accurately.

The other option is to use both to do the same analysis as you might want to compare the results are in the same ball park.

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