Overview of ANSYS structure and its graphic capabilities

This chapter provides a brief introduction to ANSYS as an engineering software suite. Using a GUI (graphical user interface) approach, the most important and basic commands are briefly outlined and illustrated by appropriate screenshots. Easy, step-by-step guidance is given in order to illustrate all vital stages of ANSYS analysis. This begins with launching the programme (naming the project, saving it in an appropriate directory, using various menus available and exiting the programme), preprocessing stage (construction of the model, selection of material, element type, meshing), the solution stage (setting up boundary conditions, applying loads, and running the solution), and finally the postprocessing stage (the general postprocessor, displaying results, error estimation).