Further FEA,CFD education?

[nickswimsfast]

I just got my BS in mechanical engineering and absolutely love working with solidworks. I'm working an internship with solidworks and have had the priveladge of using some of the add-on packages. I'm enamored with floworks, motion study, and how it can be applied to real world situations.

Where or what would be a good resource to advance my understanding of FEA, CFD, and motion studies in solidworks? Is there a masters degree i could get somewhere in the Northwest to advance to focus on this aspect? It appears some of the independent studies are fairly expensive, and if i could obtain a masters while pursuing this knowledge would be awesome.

If its not feasible to obtain this knowledge at a university, what resources would you recommend to learn more on FEA, CFD, motion studies in solidworks?

Thanks in advance!

[JerryFlyGuy]

I've taken Solidworks Approved Course for FEA and would recommend it very highly. There is ALOT more to FEA than just putting in the material, a load and hitting 'solve'.... ALOT more..

[nickswimsfast]

Indeed there is!

What is the course title of a "Solidworks Approved Course for FEA?"

I have taken a term long finite element analysis course for my undergrad where we did hand calcs for with matrices, and strengths analysis by hand of 3D trusses. We compared these hand calcs against resolved solutions from FEA with IDEAS. (Which is exasperating for FEA IMHO.) We had a real world scenario to analyze with a strain gauge as well.

Later I took Autodesk Inventor, and Solidworks where we touched on the basic built in solvers. I obtained my solidworks associate license.

So where to now? I want MOAR! Is what I took comparable to what you did? What sort of things did you learn?

[giz]

Your local SolidWorks reseller likely offers training courses in Simulation, Advanced Simulation, Flow, and Motion. These are typically 2-3 day courses and are geared towards using the software, not an academic discussion on FEA methods.

I have no doubt you could find a program that focuses on FEA though.

[JerryFlyGuy]

As Gix mentioned the course I took was a reseller course presented by their resident mechanical engineer. He did a fairly good job at covering the various aspects from an engineering perspective. It's been a year since I took it so I would have to go back to my books to even be half competent but.. it was a very good course.