NASTRAN is a finite element analysis (FEA) program that was originally

developed for NASA in the late 1960s under United States government funding
for the Aerospace industry.[1] The MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation (MSC) was
one of the principal and original developers of the public domain NASTRAN code.
NASTRAN source code is integrated in a number of different software packages,
which are distributed by a range of companies.

NASTRAN is written primarily in FORTRAN and contains

over one million lines of code. NASTRAN is compatible with a large variety of
computers and operating systems ranging from small workstations to the largest
supercomputers.

NASTRAN was designed from the beginning to consist of several modules. A

module is a collection of FORTRAN subroutines designed to perform a specific
taskprocessing model geometry, assembling matrices, applying constraints,
solving matrix problems, calculating output quantities, conversing with the
database, printing the solution, and so on. The modules are controlled by an
internal language called the Direct Matrix Abstraction Program (DMAP).

Each type of analysis available is called a solution sequence.

NASTRAN is primarily a solver for finite element analysis.[8] It does not have
functionality that allows for graphically building a model or meshing. All input
and output to the program is in the form of text files. However, multiple software
vendors market pre- and post-processors designed to simplify building a finite
element model and analyzing the results. These software tools include
functionality to import and simplify CAD geometry, mesh with finite elements,
and apply loads and restraints. The tools allow the user to submit an analysis to
NASTRAN, and import the results and show them graphically. In addition to preand post-processing capabilities, several Nastran vendors have integrated more
advanced nonlinear capabilities into their Nastran products.

Abaqus FEA[4][5] (formerly ABAQUS) is a software suite for finite element

analysis and computer-aided engineering, originally released in 1978. The name
and logo of this software are based on the abacus calculation tool.[6] The Abaqus
product suite consists of five core software products:[5]

Abaqus/CAE, or "Complete Abaqus Environment" (a backronym with an obvious

root in Computer-Aided Engineering[7]). It is a software application used for both
the modeling and analysis of mechanical components and assemblies (preprocessing) and visualizing the finite element analysis result. A subset of
Abaqus/CAE including only the post-processing module can be launched
independently in the Abaqus/Viewer product.
Abaqus/Standard, a general-purpose Finite-Element analyzer that employs
implicit integration scheme (traditional).
Abaqus/Explicit, a special-purpose Finite-Element analyzer that employs explicit
integration scheme to solve highly nonlinear systems with many complex
contacts under transient loads.
Abaqus/CFD, a Computational Fluid Dynamics software application which
provides advanced computational fluid dynamics capabilities with extensive
support for preprocessing and postprocessing provided in Abaqus/CAE.[8]
Abaqus/Electromagnetic, a Computational electromagnetics software application
which solves advanced computational electromagnetic problems.
The Abaqus products use the open-source scripting language Python for scripting
and customization. Abaqus/CAE uses the fox-toolkit for GUI development.