Hello everyone, i am want to be a cae engineer. leeoking out for the help and resourses and guidence i am a mechanical engineer. Feel free to share your guidence and resourses for help
Hi, Slata.
I’m new here too – and I am not a CAE engineer either, but thought perhaps a peer’s perspective could be useful to you.
To offer full disclosure – I have no formal engineering background at all: I’m a hobbyist/maker interested in DIY hifi audio, currently working on a ground-up design for a phono turntable, and I’ve been using Simscale’s Modal Analysis tools to inform my efforts to control resonances within the structure.
Simscale’s documentation is solid, and the forum makes expert advice accessible. But to anyone who wants to develop their CAE skill set, I recommend using AI/LLMs as a technical co-pilot. Personally I’ve used ChatGPT for most work here, though I now prefer the outputs I get from Claude.
Specific tips:
- Bring a concrete design problem you’re looking to solve. For me, “learning by doing” is more engaging and rewarding than walking through abstract tutorials.
- Have the AI design a workflow first: Start a chat, describe your goals and challenges, then ask it to design a CAE workflow to bring into Simscale.
- Don’t skip steps. Make sure you fully understand the purpose and options available on each branch of the simulation tree within your Simscale project.
- INTERROGATE ALL AI OUTPUTS – especially navigating simulation setup. LLMs will make errors or occasionally hallucinate things like material properties, etc. Make it point you to specific references (product datasheets, scholarly research, industry handbooks) and verify your data.
- Tolerate some trial-and-error. If on the Simscale community plan, use your simulation runs judiciously – but know you’ll likely burn a few. Maximizing what you learn from mistakes is key!
Simscale’s tools are powerful and intuitive to use once you get the hang of the workflow. For me, the AI helps fill knowledge gaps, improves setup, and assists in interpreting results. As always, you must use it as a tool to enhance your own thinking, rather than let it think for you. Used properly, it allows hobbyists like me to apply FAR more technical rigor to projects.
If you have a specific project in mind, start there. For me, Simscale makes more sense (and feels more fun) when the question is real. Best of luck to you!
Here’s a link to my project as reference. https://www.simscale.com/projects/mcrushing/plinth_v5/