Altair SimSolid 2025.1 Release Notes
New Features
- Physics-based Solutions
- Export modal superelements
- Export of modal superelements using the CBN method is now supported.
- Temperature-dependent materials
- Temperature-dependent material properties are now supported for steady-state thermal analysis and this includes temperature-dependent conductivity.
- Initial and final temperature definition
- SimSolid now supports both initial and final temperatures for steady-state, transient thermal, thermal imported and thermal load in structural analysis. Initial temperature can be applied as a default value for the entire assembly or can be defined on a part-to-part basis. The initial temperatures from steady-state, transient thermal and thermal imported are used when they are linked to structural analysis.
- Adapt-to-feature support for thermal analysis
- Adapt-to-features is now supported for both steady-state and transient thermal analysis. This functionality will adapt to regions with high temperature gradient for an improved solution resolution.
- Max number of adaptive solutions support for transient thermal
- SimSolid has a new implementation to support the max number of adaptive solutions for transient thermal analysis, which also helps with an improved solution resolution. Previously, transient thermal analysis always used a single pass, but it can be user-defined going forward. While it improves solution resolution, it does increase the runtime. The default max number of adaptive passes for both global and global+local solution setting is 2.
- Imported convection for transient thermal analysis
- Convection load including ambient temperature and convection coefficient can now be imported from a CSV file for transient thermal analysis. The convection parameters imported can be time-dependent load. Please see help documentation for the supported format.
- Curved composites
- The composites solution now supports geometries with curvature in
addition to the previously supported flat sheets. The material
orientation is based on a user-defined reference direction. The
material-coordinate system of the laminate is aligned in such a way that
the X-axis is along the user-defined reference direction, Z-axis is
always normal to the selected skin and Y-axis is the cross-product of
X-axis and Z-axis.
The final reference direction is always obtained by projecting the input direction on to the skin and it cannot be set normal to the selected skin. Refer to the help document for more details.
- Contact status output
- The contact response output has a new response type called contact status that displays regions that are open, closed stick and closed slip. This output is calculated based on the opening and the slippage of connection point cloud.
- Spring boundary condition
- A new boundary condition called springs is now supported for structural and modal analysis. Springs allow inclusion of stiffness along the axis and they can be applied on a face or a spot. Springs can be created between two parts or can be grounded. It also allows addition of preload.
- Usability
- Part replacement
- SimSolid now supports part replacement by right-clicking on any part in the assembly and selecting Replace part to replace it with a modified design. With this functionality, all existing attributes and connections such as materials, contacts, loads and boundary conditions are automatically maintained. It also creates a new design study with the modified design.
- New manipulator for clipping/datum plane
- A new manipulator is now available for both clipping and datum planes. The manipulator allows for easy control and positioning of the plane including translation and rotation. The clipping and datum planes are now always capped and indicated in a blue color.
- Project Tree Organization
- The design studies and the analysis in the Project Tree can be organized by moving them up/down. Right-click on the item and select an option to move them up/down.
- Performance
- Adaptation of protruded parts
- There is a new implementation of adaptation for protruded parts which improves the solution quality and runtime performance.
- Adaptation to reduce the size of equation system
- The solution adaptation has been improved to reduce the overall size of the equation system without compromising the solution quality which should improve the overall runtime. The runtime can be up to 80% faster.
Enhancements
- Seam weld reactions
- Seam weld reaction stresses now support inclusion of bending moments in
the stress calculations. There is now an option to output absolute
values for maximum stresses that will be printed in the table and
further used in failure evaluation.
Average equivalent stress evaluation is now performed by calculating equivalent stress along the weld and then averaging the equivalent stresses as opposed to calculating it from average normal and shear stresses.
In addition to the average equivalent stress, maximum equivalent stress is also output.
- Hinge boundary condition
- Remote supports under Connections > Virtual connections have been moved to hinge boundary condition. All older projects with remote supports will be upgraded to include them as part of the boundary condition instead of the connections.
- Multi-loadcase Enhancements
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- Copy constraints from other solutions such as structural, modal to multi-loadcase is now supported.
- Import of spot displacements is now available for multi-loadcase.
- Distributed mass on spots
- Creation of distributed mass on spots is now supported.
- Toolbar icon to show/hide lines
- A new toolbar icon to show/hide user-defined lines is now available.
- Stress linearization
- Stress linearization is now supported for structural analysis with contact and geometric nonlinearity.
- Updated CAD import formats
- The list of supported CAD formats has been updated as below for
Parasolid and legacy readers:
File Format Supported Versions Parasolid All - 37.1 Spatial reader can now read Step and Inventor files in addition to CATIA files. Below are the supported versions.File Format Supported Versions CATIA V5 (.CATPart, .CADProduct) R8 to R35 (V5-6 R2025) Inventor (.ipt, .iam) All to 2025 STEP (.stp) 203/214/242 - Others
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- Adhesive adaptation has been enhanced to make it robust when they are created between parts with larger proportional gap between them.
- Reactions are now available for imported spot displacements.
- Output of number of nut turns when bolt tightening is applied as axial force.
- Datum planes can now be edited.
- Min/max of contact response is shown only for selected connections.
- Superelements are mapped to new design studies for common parts.
- Default origin for datum points is now at the cog of the assembly.
- When running a solution via batch mode, the status is to output to the log file by default.
- The QT framework has been upgraded to QT 6.5.4.
- SimSolid memory peak is saved to analysis info.
- Secondary window information is now saved for bookmarks including for modes, multi-loadcase and incremental nonlinear analysis.
- ECAD reader has been improved.
- Minor changes to Neuber stress evaluation.
Deprecated Features
- Remote support
- Remote supports under Connections > Virtual connectors were deprecated and moved to the hinge boundary condition.
- Show history graph
- The show history graph was removed for transient thermal analysis. The history graphs can still be plotted from the Pick info dialog.
Resolved Issues
- A bug related to skipped adaptation for the last group when several groups
are used in solution settings has been fixed Note: This may impact the runtime in cases when analysis is run with several groups in the solution settings including global + local adaptation.
- Issues with displacements along force directions in pick load when the model/load is not aligned with global system
- The results between pick info and the contour is now consistent with local coordinate system.
- All issues with results in local coordinate system
- Issues correctly updating constraints in local analysis
- Issues with finding rivets along coaxial holes when bolted connections already exist
- Issues with normals when spot weld coordinates are edited
- Modal participation factors for complex eigenvalue analysis
- The results are now invalidated for superelement export analysis when different materials are assigned to the parts.
- Teamcenter repositories can be added in local languages now.
- Issues with empty results for thermal superposition
- Adhesive creation is improved between surfaces with curvature.
- Issues with incorrectly updating gravity load across several analysis
- Issues with properly converting values across different unit systems for wind load
- Issues with converting stress-strain curves correctly when switching between different unit systems
- Issue with automatically sorting the rows in a review regular connections dialog when a connection is deleted
- Duplicate points from imported loads are now ignored.
- Issue with safety factor plots with welds in the model
- Issue with failure to update reactions after turning off display options
- Issues reviewing entities after updating sheet thickness
- Issue with result plot not saving the coordinate information
- Issue with spot weld coordinates information not saving to the CSV correctly
- Visualization issues with datum planes
- Visualization issues with superelement interface points
- Visualization issues with local/material coordinate system
- Issues related to calculation of rotations on flat faces
- Color visualization of laser welds is fixed and are now displayed in red when picked.
- Automatic creation of custom contact conditions for incompatible contacts
- Issues with spot center of gravity unless the units of dimensionless CAD is mm
- Issues with ply re-order when the laminates are re-organized
- Issue with duplicate icons in some dialogs
- Issues with pointing to the correct help pages from the dialogs
- Some of the inconsistencies with display and selection of entities in the dialogs, GUI and Project Tree
- Issues with numerical instabilities
- Several crashes
Known Issues
The following known issues will be addressed in a future release as we continuously
improve performance of the software.
- Issues with linear guide joint under virtual connectors
- As of October 14, 2025, Microsoft Windows 10 will reach its end of support. Following Microsoft's messaging, all Altair 2026 applications will no longer support Windows 10. Altair is providing this information to help our customers prepare and accommodate for this change. Altair 2026 will support the Windows 11 operating system, along with our other Linux-based operating systems. Please contact your local Altair support teams if you have any questions or concerns.