Overview / What's New
CDS brings composite materials, design and manufacturing together in one visual workspace. Explore material choices, build and compare designs, and see how loading, processing and the environment affect performance. The latest improvements make it easier to follow your study from the first idea to the results, with clearer visuals, connected exercises and help along the way. Discover what’s new below and how it can support your next project.
RELEASE HISTORY
Expand a month, then a release. Explore customer-facing website updates and upcoming Workbench improvements.
Application-led capability pages, model exploration under Theory, linked About topics, and fixed-position exercise maps with unused blocks hidden by default. This is a website update, not a new solver release.
Explore the exercises →Workbench features
September 2026 · Workbench feature guideThermal, Moisture, Mechanical and EM cases each own their model and applicable cycle. Select the run combination in SIMULATION, with None available in every slot. Other blocks hold used and available records; adding a candidate does not silently change the run.
Choose a case combination →Editing a shared geometry warns you about affected cases and simulations. Open their source records from Solver messages, review model compatibility and rerun outdated results. Geometry changes do not silently replace the loading model.
Review geometry dependencies →Independent input/output navigation, live CLT from visible ply materials, class-aware selection, fill-down and multiple-count duplication make design studies easier. The manual explains when process residuals require a rerun.
Understand live sync and result freshness →Explore two angle families with a live stack preview, compare first-failure envelopes, display plot markers and inspect through-thickness stress and strain. Criteria, sampling and stopping assumptions are now documented together.
Follow the analysis guide →Search mass, first-failure strength or selected strain objectives. Save snapshots from the structural-case header, reopen them in the Optimizations tree and compare saved studies in tables, Ashby, bar or line views. Apply a candidate or create a separate laminate.
Run and preserve a design study →New method notes distinguish live elastic previews, interactive failure and optimization, saved coupled runs. Read what is coupled, what remains fixed and what a best-found design does not prove.
Review the method boundaries →Sweep constituent fractions, voids, architecture terms, empirical closure parameters and transport inputs. Plot any two inputs against elastic, strength, thermal or moisture outputs in 2D or filled 3D maps, locate minima and maxima, save the study and apply a selected candidate.
Optimize the ply scale →Optimize boundary temperatures, ramps and dwells against core-temperature, cure-state, cycle-time and overshoot targets. Steady-state and transient thermal routes share editable transport inputs, while optional cure exotherm and cure-dependent modulus feed process stress development.
Optimize a process cycle →Material records now show supplier links, source citations, source basis, qualification status and CDS engineering completion fields. A zero-term switch exposes stored zero values, and model constants that affect predictions are editable inputs available to optimization.
Manage traceable materials →Move multiple selected records together, duplicate any record with a chosen count, keep an empty Optimizations branch ready for saved studies, reopen simulation cases reliably, and search destinations before committing a bulk move.
Organize connected studies →Carpet surfaces support user-selected sweep placement, filled surfaces at 55% default opacity, autoscale on/off, minima and maxima, a resizable controls/plot split, and a live laminate alongside the 3D view. Failure envelopes can display first-ply, last-ply and other supported conditions.
Explore the visualization controls →Composite-vendor material classes, bundled vendor records, and a Sandwich Structures laminate class add two ready-to-inspect sandwich examples while retaining the same source-aware record and comparison workflow.
Review material capabilities →Follow every released Workbench family to its model-tree location, inputs, result limits, theory and guided exercise, including the eight separate analytical studies.
Review released models and connections →New theory coverage includes continuous and aligned-discontinuous fibers, fabrics, warp–weft crimp, filled and hybrid matrices, voids, thermal properties, damage, and failure.
Browse micromechanics →Eligible CLT cases support released ply-failure criteria. Coupled ply damage and cohesive growth use the calibrated layerwise section path. Finite-plate and separate analytical studies retain their own limits.
Explore laminate theory →Selectable cure-reaction laws now track degree of cure, irreversible state evolution, reaction heat, chemical shrinkage, and the material inputs needed for coupled processing analysis.
Review cure kinetics →Nakamura and Avrami evolution models capture the crystallization temperature window, latent heat, crystallization shrinkage, and the validation data required to calibrate the material response.
Review crystallization →A continuum and cell-centered finite-volume thermal model supports independent top and bottom boundary histories, theta time integration, and heat coupling to material-state evolution.
Review thermal processing →New Fickian continuum and heterogeneous finite-volume models resolve moisture transport, independent boundary conditions, and hygroscopic strain for downstream laminate response.
Review moisture diffusion →Thermal, moisture, cure, and crystallization histories now map to ply-level free strains, residual resultants, damaged laminate stiffness, generalized equilibrium, and progressive failure outputs.
Review structural coupling →Stephen W. Tsai's pioneering Double-Double laminate methodology is now a live feature within the CDS laminate editor. Users can create and evaluate DD laminate configurations directly as part of the design workflow.
Read Tsai's pioneering DD paper →Rectangular laminate plates now support independently simply supported, fixed, or free edges, with static deflection, critical buckling, and natural-frequency results.
Review plate analysis →Pressure, axial force, and torque can be solved in radial–hoop–axial coordinates using either the engineering shell model or the Hyer formulation.
See cylinder examples →Rectangular, I, circular-tube, rectangular-tube, and solid-circle sections report geometric inertia, effective EI, strain energy, deflection, buckling, and frequency.
See beam examples →The current Workbench release adds compact tree and laminate editing, state-aware symmetry, balance, and DD actions, LiveLoad schematics, persistent result tabs, four common comparison views, and material creation from effective lamina or laminate properties.
Open the updated User Manual →