About CAEFlow: The CAE Engineering Community

You probably remember your first weeks as a junior CAE engineer. Fresh out of university, convinced you knew quite a bit about mechanics and simulation. Then you faced a complex commercial CAE software for the first time on a real project — and suddenly wondered how and where to even begin.

At university, the problems were clean. Simplified geometries, ideal boundary conditions, nicely behaved materials. The kind of problems that fit into a textbook chapter. But in the real world you deal with complex assemblies, nonlinear behavior, messy geometries, and questions that often textbooks do not prepare you for.

As a junior, you may recall tasks like performing a fatigue analysis on a welded joint. Sounds straightforward, right? But the moment you start digging in, questions emerge. Which method should you use — nominal stress, structural hot spot, or effective notch stress? What are the pros and cons of each? What mesh requirements does the hot spot method demand? What precautions do you need to take? Or consider another common situation: should you run a linear or nonlinear analysis? If nonlinear, what plasticity model should you use? What are the tricks you need to follow, and what mistakes should you avoid?

So, like many others, you do what most junior engineers do — you turn to the seniors around you, hoping to tap into their years of embedded knowledge. You ask how to proceed, what pitfalls to watch out for. Those conversations over coffee, those quick tips scribbled on a whiteboard, those moments where an experienced colleague shares a hard-earned lesson that no textbook could easily teach — those are the moments that truly shape an engineer.

This is the story for most juniors entering the world of CAE. It is a field where invaluable knowledge from seasoned engineers often remains hidden and is rarely shared openly. Seeing so many engineers with years of hands-on experience — knowledge gained through facing complex, real-world problems — it raises some questions: why is so much of this knowledge locked away? Why do junior engineers have to struggle through the same painful learning curves, when experienced engineers out there have already solved these exact problems? Why doesn’t this field share more openly?

These questions are reasons for creating this platform. A place to share experience-based knowledge from senior engineers. A place where you can seek advice, consult with others, and learn from those who have walked the path before them.

Our Vision for This Community

A place to truly learn the fundamentals. Whether it’s solid mechanics, fluid dynamics, fatigue analysis, or FEA workflows — we want to help you build a strong foundation. Not just the theory you find in textbooks, but the practical understanding that gives you confidence when you sit down in front of your simulation software and face a real engineering problem.

A place to share and have conversations. We want you to read our articles, challenge what we write, share your own experience, leave comments, and tell us where you agree or disagree. The best learning happens when people talk to each other — not when they consume content in silence.

A place to find your people. CAE can be a surprisingly lonely field. We want CAEFlow to be where you discover other engineers working on similar challenges, learn from their journeys, and build real professional connections — networking that actually means something.

A place to ask for help. We’ve all been stuck on a problem with nowhere to turn. One of our biggest goals is to build a space where engineers can bring their toughest questions — whether it’s a convergence issue, a modeling decision, or an analysis approach they’re unsure about — and get thoughtful answers from people who have been in the same spot.

A place for students. If you’re a student learning Abaqus, ANSYS, OpenFOAM, CalculiX, or any other simulation tool, and you have a question you can’t find the answer to anywhere else — we want you here. No question is too basic. We all started somewhere, and we remember what it felt like.

A bridge between beginners and professionals. What excites us most is the idea of building a community where a student can learn directly from a seasoned industry engineer, and where experienced professionals can rediscover fundamentals through fresh eyes. A place where different levels of experience come together — not to compete, but to help each other grow.

Want to be part of this? Whether you’d like to contribute an article, share a case study, ask a question, or simply say hello — we’d love to hear from you.