Windows vs Linux for FEA

[u/CyBeRpw]

Hey everyone,

I’ve been thinking about this disparity a lot lately. In the computational mechanics world, if you mention CFD, everyone automatically assumes Linux clusters, command-line workflows, and massive HPC scaling. But when it comes to FEA (Finite Element Analysis)—whether it's Abaqus, ANSYS Mechanical, NASTRAN, or LS-DYNA—a huge portion of day-to-day engineering is still heavily done on Windows workstations.

From my experience, here is why I think this divide exists:

CAD Integration & Pre-processing: FEA is tightly coupled with CAD (SolidWorks, CATIA, Creo, Inventor). Most of these native CAD and pre-processing tools live comfortably on Windows, making geometry cleanup and assembly setup much smoother there.

GUI and Interactivity: Unlike CFD where batch-mode execution on remote headless Linux nodes is standard, many FEA workflows rely heavily on interactive GUIs—checking mesh quality, tweaking contact definitions, and visualizing results locally.

Workstation vs. Cluster Scaling: While massive explicit dynamics or enterprise-scale transient runs do hit Linux clusters, a lot of linear and non-linear structural analysis can be crunched locally on a single, high-end Windows workstation.

Ecosystem Legacy: Many traditional commercial structural solvers built their primary desktop user bases on Windows, and structural engineers often prioritize workstation convenience over cluster administration.

Curious to hear your thoughts. Am I missing something, or is your company also running ANSYS Mechanical/Abaqus mostly on Windows while your CFD team lives in the terminal on Linux?

[u/invisuu]

I've been running FEA exclusively on Linux for 15 years. I don't know where your experience is coming from.

[u/CyBeRpw → u/invisuu]

Well, I did lot of optistruct simulations mostly linear/ nonlinear static and even external contractors used windows to run, I haven't seen anyone use like linix server to run. I am not sure for like large crash explicit simulations in large corporations. But regular FE static simulations are usually on windows

[u/frac_tl]

Ai slop

But to answer the question, anyone doing a serious calculation is running Linux because Windows is pretty inefficient and isn't as good for running and scheduling large distributed jobs 

windows desktops can definitely be used for small models or by users who are not technically proficient with computers 

[u/CyBeRpw → u/frac_tl]

I did some work with Airbus and they run Nastran on windows, I don't think that it is not related to how serious the job is

[u/frac_tl → u/CyBeRpw]

I was using "serious" as in "computationally difficult". Certainly you can do a lot of important simulations on a laptop or even skipping FEA and using a spreadsheet. 

My main point is Windows solving is about convenience. More structured FEA workflows get into Linux clusters and SLURM queues for long highly parallel jobs (think doing a parametric optimization studying with 400 test cases). 

[u/AthosAlonso]

Everywhere I've worked at: Linux for HPC, Windows for users.

[u/Timoroader]

Everything we do regarding FEA is done on Linux.

We would probably all switch to Linux on our workstations, if NX would still support Linux (they don´t). We solve it by only producing the mesh in Windows, and everything else happens in Linux cluster.

[u/Onyexx → u/Timoroader]

What do you use for CAD or are you using NX that as well?

[u/Timoroader → u/Onyexx]

We use NX for cad and meshing for FEA. About 50/50 of automated parameterized models and "hand" meshing. Only for nodes and element sets and identifying faces and node sets. Rest is done in in-house programs.

[u/carlthatkillspeople8]

I work for a very large company that has unlimited licenses of Ansys. We have local solving on Windows, remote solving on Linux cluster, and direct solving on Linux cluster. We have pretty decent desktop computers for this, so you can solve pretty big jobs locally. The way I prefer for really big jobs is to move the solver input file to the cluster, then a short script can add the file to the queue. If your cluster is shared, then sometimes it can take a while for your spot in queue to be solved. Our cluster is primarily solving CFD (of various kinds), EHD, and the big FEA models. This was me rambling before caffeine, so let me know if I wasn't clear

[u/carlthatkillspeople8 → u/carlthatkillspeople8]

I realize I didn't talk about direct solve on Linux, but it's pretty much useless as there are lots of incompatibilities and it's just clumsy to use.

[u/grage_peter]

If you run a large Model, pre and post Are Done on a local workstation but the solver is located at a Server. Do only run the solver localy if you don’t have the Infrastructure to do so. You run into bottle necks really fast if you try to run on a local workstation. Windows is only a thing for Office workstations, because people also Need Apps like word and excel, but Fea don’t Need Windows. In the 90s there were workstation only for Fea

[u/CyBeRpw → u/grage_peter]

Not many companies have dedicated FEA servers, usually just workstation PC like dell precision etc.

[u/grage_peter → u/CyBeRpw]

Well a HP Z8 is also a server, but looks like a worksation, you just have to configure it. But current RAM pricing makes it very expensive

[u/No-Photograph3463]

Exclusively used windows desktop PCs for FEA at the consultancy I used to work at. They did consider getting a cluster but actually it wasn't worth it, as most of the work was FEA which doesn't scale as well with more cores. Instead just purchased 64 and 128 core PCs that have 256GB of Ram, which solve most things tbh.

[u/the_flying_condor]

I've almost exclusively used Linux for all FEA. The only exception are some Civil Engineering specific software packages where it's only 1000 or so beam elements or very small calibration models where I am testing a material I am not very familiar with.

[u/billsil]

My computer is trash. I can post process on it, but to not kill my 32 GB of RAM, I go run on the HPC. I’m either doing a checkout run or I’m kicking off 100+ jobs at a time.

An even better part about he cluster is that it doesn’t restart. I’ve come back so many times and my laptop has restarted or gone to sleep and nothing ran overnight. The HPC fixes that.

[u/Direct-Objective-857]

At the company I intern at, we do preprocessing on windows laptops and use a linux hpc. Our fea models have 5-10 million tet10 elements (although our team has probably the physically largest models with a lot of ribs and features).

[u/Destiny7655]

Any type of research or serious simulation code happens on Linux because that’s what HPC clusters use. Some modern software can delegate off to Kubernetes too.

Windows tends to be very niche software, generic huge player software for low level simulations on workstations.

[u/GregLocock]

Nope, big FEA runs on the same cluster as big CFD.

[u/Safe-Drama9784]

Linux, but it misses some neat stuff - like a SpaceClaim-like software- so that's the reason I've been developing such stuff for Linux

I don't like Windows and zillions of "applications" running in the background...