Astronomic Instruments Maker uses Femap to Save Time and Costs

ADS International, based in Valmadrera, Lecco, Italy, has been designing and building telescope, radio telescope and astronomic instruments for nearly 30 years. The company’s two main product lines are adaptive optics and optics alignment systems. The nature of this business is such that each product is one of a kind, and ADS’ customers include large international observatories such as the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

The main challenge in the design of astronomic instruments is responding to the unique demands of this industry within a reasonable time frame. The ADS team needs to move rapidly from a CAD geometry model to a structural analysis model and employ digital simulation to prove the design virtually.



To that end, ADS accesses geometry from a variety of 3D formats and imports the model data into Femap, helping to expedite finite element model generation. Also, NX Nastran has helped ADS to cut processing time by 30% through the use of parallel computing in the solution stage.

You can read the full case study and see how ADS has adopted simulation software and expanded its application to include more advanced analysis types helping to prove designs and optimize the design process.