As a major disappointment to the open-source community, Siemens has decided to end – and close-up access – to the OpenRadioss project as the open-source version opened up by Altair Engineering under the GNU AGPL License back in 2022. This was an open-source version of the industry-leading finite element solver that Altair developed. Siemens acquired Altair Engineering last year and have now completely shut the door on OpenRadioss.
Originally from Altair, Radioss has been an industry-leading solver for analyzing crashes, blasts, and other purposes. Altair creating OpenRadioss was a huge milestone for the technical computing industry. It also had other effects like for myself in finally being able to benchmark with this (Open)Radioss code for CPU performance testing compared to the expensive licensing on Radioss itself.
To much disappointment, I find out today they have completely closed down OpenRadioss. The Siemens.com page now explains of OpenRadioss:
"OpenRadioss is transitioning to a new phase. Visitors looking for crash and impact simulation solutions can now explore Simcenter Radioss and the Radioss R&D program through Siemens. These offerings provide pathways for both production engineering and advanced research activities.
...
The OpenRadioss website is being retired and visitors are being redirected to this transition page. If you are looking for simulation software, technical information or opportunities to engage with future development activities, Siemens provides resources and programs to support those needs."
Even worse, it’s just not the OpenRadioss website being “retired” a.k.a. shutdown but they closed up their GitHub repository too. OpenRadioss on GitHub is now a 404. It would be one thing just to archive it and at least keep the open-source code readily available, but instead it’s been removed.
OpenRadioss 404
Siemens argues the OpenRadioss closure as for consolidating efforts:
"After four years of successful community-driven research, Siemens is entering a new chapter for the Radioss solver. To accelerate innovation and provide the robust support our global users require for production-grade simulation, we are consolidating our efforts."
Very disappointing to see from such a very promising technical computing project these past few years that was also very useful for real-world performance benchmarking purposes as my main interest in the project. At least for now I’ll continue with OpenRadioss benchmarking using archived local binaries for there not being any other superior free or open-source solution available. A major disappointment out of Siemens.
fuck off 😅
i loved openscad and the current freecad isn’t buggy at all.
but i am not a heavy user.
As a heavy CAD user, openscad is a neat gimmick and a great way to teach parameters and it’s integreatability with software tools is second to none, but it’s not useful for doing “real” work - and freecad is a project I love and support because it’s got a great personality. We desperately need a robust open source alternative for CAD to do what blender has done for polymodeling and animation to escape the hell that is the major engineering companies.
Uuuuuuuunfortunately freecad just sucks. At least, right now. It’ll get there, and maybe with people turning on the mega software companies it’ll get there even faster now, but man step one will be kidnapping a UX dev to work on it (and step two will be to fix everything to do with compound faces).