Support / SIMULIA Advantage Support

SIMULIA Advantage Support

Additional Information

SIMULIA provides high-quality technical support and related services as an important part of our relationship with our customers. We offer many different ways for our customers to solve their problems and get their questions answered.

Front-line Support

We provide front-line support through our local offices and representatives. Our support engineers have expert knowledge of SIMULIA’s entire product suite as well as engineering. By answering your product-related questions, they can help you solve your analysis and engineering problems.
>> Locate your Local Support Office

My Support

My Support is a 24/7, password protected, Web-based support system designed to serve you efficiently at any time. This Online Support System consists of a knowledge base of answers to questions about using the Abaqus Unified FEA product suite, Abaqus for CATIA V5, and SIMULIA SLM, as well as other add-on products.

The questions and responses you receive from support engineers are stored in a searchable format, allowing you to check the status of your questions, review responses, and search all the questions you have submitted. Additionally, the My Support knowledge base maintains answers to questions ranging from installation and licensing, to finite element modeling and scripting. The answers are prepared by support engineers and developers of SIMULIA solutions, so you can expect in-depth and detailed information. A powerful search engine allows you to drill down quickly to the answers specific to your problem.
>> Create a My Support Account

What kind of help can you expect from support engineers?

Support engineers can assist in clarifying software features; advising on the choice of elements, materials, or analysis procedures; suggesting modeling approaches; and confirming or denying suspected errors. We will correct any errors in the documentation that are brought to our attention.

If you have concerns about an analysis, contact us at an early stage. It is much more efficient to solve problems by helping you use good modeling techniques from the start, rather than trying to resolve modeling errors after you have invested considerable time in a large model that is not working.

If you are customizing software by writing user subroutines, Python scripts, or postprocessing programs using the API to the output database, we do not offer code debugging as part of our standard Advantage support service. Most of our offices can help you with this as a consulting project for an additional fee.
>> Learn more about SIMULIA Consulting Services

How can I get my questions answered quickly?

When you contact your local support office, whether by telephone, e-mail, or fax, your question will be answered more quickly if you describe the problem you are having clearly and in detail.
>> See Answer 3399

What do I do if I need to send an input file or other files needed to solve my problem?

Via My Support
You can upload to your My Support Web account as many files as needed. For a practical security reason, the each file is limited to about 5 to 10 megabytes in size (the limitation is governed by your Internet connection transfer speed). Please contact a support engineer and he will give you instructions on how to FTP your file to our FTP site. Do not load files to the SIMULIA FTP site unless requested to do so.

Via E-mail
If your files are larger than 5 megabytes, they will be too large to be read by the Dassault Systèmes email system. Please contact a support engineer and he will give you instructions on how to FTP your files to our FTP site. Do not load files to the SIMULIA FTP site unless requested to do so.

Via Standard Mail
We also accept files on compact disc (CD & DVD). Be sure to put your support engineer's name on or in the package that you send. This saves time for both you and the support engineer, since the package can then be quickly distributed to the correct person.

Before you submit any model or other information that you consider to require more confidentiality than there is already in your SIMULIA license agreement, please be sure that there is a mutually agreeable non-disclosure agreement in place and that you designate the information as confidential. Also, do not submit any information to us that is subject to any governmental export or security regulations (such as US ITAR regulations) without first making arrangements with us for restricting access to appropriate personnel.

What if I am an academic customer?

Under the terms of the Academic License Agreement, we do not provide support to users at academic institutions unless the academic user has also purchased technical support.
>> See Answer 3408

How can I make suggestions to improve Abaqus?

SIMULIA is always continuing to improve our products. We look to our customers for feedback and suggestions about enhancements and improvements. We maintain a database of all Requests for Enhancements (RFE) filed by our customers. We constantly strive to incorporate as many of these requests as possible. After submitting your Request for Enhancement, you can expect to receive a response within seven days.
>> See Answer 940