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Mecway
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Mecway 33
Mecway 33 is now available at the link below and includes the Spanish language manual translated by Germán Bresciano.
https://mecway.com/download/mecway330.msi
This is currently a release candidate so it has a higher risk of new bugs. If no serious bugs are found, it will be promoted to a stable release, otherwise it will be superseded by version 34.
Changes
General
Saved views can include view options like Show element surfaces and Deformed view, and component visibility state.
Vertical scroll bar for laminate input box.
Reduced memory use for element values in solutions.
Shell offset in Element properties is deprecated in favour of Element offset in Loads & Constraints.
Contact item in outline tree shows type and stiffness.
Face selections that are linked to geometry surfaces show the number of surfaces in the outline tree like <linked, 3>
Gmsh
Setting for Mesh.Algorithm (2D mesh algorithm). Default is now 2 (automatic) which often gives better element shapes than not specifying it.
No longer generates unused midface nodes for quadratic quadrilateral faces.
Can read 14-node pyramid from Gmsh. Leaves the 14th node unconnected.
Changed from the deprecated CharacteristicLength... to equivalent MeshSize...
Internal solver
Modal effective mass and modal effective mass fraction. Not available when MPCs, including rotated constraints, are present.
CalculiX
CCX version updated to 2.23.
Velocity initial conditions can have the magnitude be a function of position.
Incompatible hex8 is required for CCX solver.
Clearer error message for missing contact state on elastic contacts with time steps.
Doesn’t show "Unknown reason" or missing dependencies error message for stress when beam section forces are present or for stress in frequency analysis when stress stiffening is present.
OpenRadioss
Removed version option and recommended only stable release 20260120. This affects beam internal forces and moments in the solution which were defined differently by OpenRadioss before 2026.
C, T, L beam sections.
Error message for shell offset instead of silently ignoring it.
Velocity initial conditions and boundary conditions can have the magnitude be a function of position.
Mystran
Pinned support.
Constraint equation.
Solution includes von Mises by default.
Updated bundled solver to commit ae40b55 from 2026-02-16.
Bug fixes
Added missing GRID to modify bulk data entry name list for Mystran.
"Operation is not valid due to the current state of the object." after deleting certain rows from a table in a load.
Undo altered the names of saved views.
"Object reference not set to an instance of an object." with Pre-tension section applied to no elements in the internal solver.
Pressing the Stop button on an iterative static solve discarded the solution instead of retaining the last iteration.
Fatal error for laminates with more than the maximum allowed number of layers (40).
https://mecway.com/download/mecway330.msi
This is currently a release candidate so it has a higher risk of new bugs. If no serious bugs are found, it will be promoted to a stable release, otherwise it will be superseded by version 34.
Changes
General
Saved views can include view options like Show element surfaces and Deformed view, and component visibility state.
Vertical scroll bar for laminate input box.
Reduced memory use for element values in solutions.
Shell offset in Element properties is deprecated in favour of Element offset in Loads & Constraints.
Contact item in outline tree shows type and stiffness.
Face selections that are linked to geometry surfaces show the number of surfaces in the outline tree like <linked, 3>
Gmsh
Setting for Mesh.Algorithm (2D mesh algorithm). Default is now 2 (automatic) which often gives better element shapes than not specifying it.
No longer generates unused midface nodes for quadratic quadrilateral faces.
Can read 14-node pyramid from Gmsh. Leaves the 14th node unconnected.
Changed from the deprecated CharacteristicLength... to equivalent MeshSize...
Internal solver
Modal effective mass and modal effective mass fraction. Not available when MPCs, including rotated constraints, are present.
CalculiX
CCX version updated to 2.23.
Velocity initial conditions can have the magnitude be a function of position.
Incompatible hex8 is required for CCX solver.
Clearer error message for missing contact state on elastic contacts with time steps.
Doesn’t show "Unknown reason" or missing dependencies error message for stress when beam section forces are present or for stress in frequency analysis when stress stiffening is present.
OpenRadioss
Removed version option and recommended only stable release 20260120. This affects beam internal forces and moments in the solution which were defined differently by OpenRadioss before 2026.
C, T, L beam sections.
Error message for shell offset instead of silently ignoring it.
Velocity initial conditions and boundary conditions can have the magnitude be a function of position.
Mystran
Pinned support.
Constraint equation.
Solution includes von Mises by default.
Updated bundled solver to commit ae40b55 from 2026-02-16.
Bug fixes
Added missing GRID to modify bulk data entry name list for Mystran.
"Operation is not valid due to the current state of the object." after deleting certain rows from a table in a load.
Undo altered the names of saved views.
"Object reference not set to an instance of an object." with Pre-tension section applied to no elements in the internal solver.
Pressing the Stop button on an iterative static solve discarded the solution instead of retaining the last iteration.
Fatal error for laminates with more than the maximum allowed number of layers (40).
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Comments
Memory use improvements are always welcome and meshing improvements too.
As for the bug fix of errors with laminates with more than 40 layers.... I do not envy the worker who has to manufacture a laminated part with more than 40 layers.
The thickest laminate I've done is 14 layers of either side of a 25mm foam core for a rectangular test specimen and that took like forever to cut and lay so I can't imagine the dread of placing 40 layers on some complex shape while having to ensure the quality of the laminate and fiber orientation.
I was wondering about the reasoning behind the default hex element being C3D8I, is there a feeling that C3D8 and/or C3D8R are not reliable? Also it appears the default quadratic hex element is C3D20 - not C3D20I, how does the reasoning change for this type of element?.
I'm not sure it is a bug but i have tried on a couple of occasions to "save video to file" in a quasi static analysis and the program stops responding.
Recording a video does hang the UI while it's recording, which is not nice but it should eventually come back. If you don't touch it, you can usually still see the progress but if you click on anything, it'll stop updating and just work silently.