I have to say that this bit of software really rocks! I love the way it ticks. It uses a free GUI or if you prefer a text editor. It is very well known for it’s explicit solver but the implicit solver has evolved to a more mature state compared to the past. In this package I really feel I own my model since all of it its setup is in a readable text format. So I guess this package has as it’s strengths a good solver and a free editing pre and post processing GUI with a readable model file that contains geometry and all of the configurations needed.

LSTC could up a bit the meshing environment and the CAD connection. Many times I need to use Ansys to create and optimise the geometry and mesh it to then export it to LS-Dyna. Complex geometries with Hex elements are a challenge in LS-Dyna but of corse so are the duplicated nodes that we encounter when we import a model from Ansys. All in all it requires some getting use too, to find the ins and outs of these two softwares and make them work together. Still the end result is very powerful.

LS-Dyna is also visually appealing as you can see in the following image:

LS-Dyna Pre Post

The working file in LS-Dyna is a .K file. If opened with LS PrePost and if we open the keyword manager we see the following:

LS-Dyna K file

Most of the model configuration can be access through the keyword manager and analogously if opened the file a text base structure can be seen with the same organisation as the keyword manager.

K file for LS-Dyna