Motion Simulation With Working Model 2D and MSC.visualNastran 4D

1. Overview MSC.Software Corporation (MSC), offers three motion simulation products [1]: Interactive Physics ® (IP), Working Model ® 2D (WM2D), and MSC.visualNastran 4D (vN4D). IP and WM2D simulate 2D motion on Mac and Windows ® platforms. vN4D simulates 3D motion with dynamic finite element analysis (FEA) on Windows. IP is intended for physics and physical sciences in grades 7-12 and college. WM2D and vN4D are intended for higher education and engineering professionals. IP and WM2D have the same user interface and simulation engine, but WM2D can import DXF files and has WMBasic, a scripting language for creating specialized macros. Since IP is a subset of WM2D, it is not discussed further. The evolution of these three simulation products is interesting, as their names have changed several times. Knowledge Revolution (acquired by MSC) first released Interactive Physics as Fun Physics in 1988. Renamed Interactive Physics in 1989, IP is distributed worldwide in seven different languages and is the standard in motion simulation for Newtonian physics. The latest version of IP was released in 2000. Working Model was first released in 1993 for the engineering community. It was created by adding engineering functionality to IP and importing DXF drawings from CAD packages such as AutoCAD.