Best Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) Software
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Compare the Top Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) Software as of January 2026
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What is Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) Software?
Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) software is used by engineers to analyze and simulate the performance, behavior, and characteristics of designs in a virtual environment. CAE software enables engineers to perform various types of analysis, including structural, thermal, fluid dynamics, and electromagnetics, helping to ensure that products are optimized for functionality, safety, and cost-effectiveness before physical prototypes are created. It includes tools for finite element analysis (FEA), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), multibody dynamics (MBD), and optimization studies. CAE software is widely used in industries such as automotive, aerospace, energy, and manufacturing to improve product designs, reduce material usage, and shorten development cycles. Compare and read user reviews of the best Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) software currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.
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Autodesk Fusion 360
Autodesk
Fusion 360 unifies design, engineering, electronics, and manufacturing into a single software platform. Get integrated CAD, CAM, CAE & PCB on a single development platform. Also includes EAGLE Premium, HSMWorks, Team Participant, and access to consumptive services, such as generative design, cloud simulation, and cloud rendering. Engineer products with a comprehensive set of modeling tools. Ensure form, fit, and function of your products with various analysis methods. Create and edit sketches with sketch constraints, dimensions, and a powerful suite of sketch tools. Edit or repair imported geometry from non-native file formats. Make design changes without worrying about time-based features. Create and edit complex parametric surfaces for repairing, patching or designing geometry. Create history-based features, including extrude, revolve, loft, sweep, etc., that update with design changes.Starting Price: $495 per year -
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Netfabb
Autodesk
Netfabb® software includes efficient build preparation capabilities alongside tools for optimizing designs for additive manufacturing, simulating metal additive processes, and planning for CNC post-processing. Import models from a variety of CAD formats and use repair tools to quickly correct errors. Make your models production ready by adjusting wall thicknesses, smoothing rough areas, and more. Identify areas that require support and use semi-automated tools to generate support structures. Convert organic, free-form mesh files to boundary representation models and make them available in CAD in STEP, SAT, or IGES format. Use 2D and 3D packing algorithms to optimally place parts within the build volume. Create custom reports that include critical information for manufacturing and quoting. Develop build strategies and define toolpath parameters for maximum surface quality, part density, and speed.Starting Price: $30 per month -
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Amphyon
Oqton
Additive Works provides software solutions aiming at a "first-time-right" additive manufacturing process by integrating new analysis and simulation tools into the process chain of Laser Beam Melting processes (LBM, SLM, DMLS, Metal 3D Printing). Driven by current requirements and challenges of industrial additive manufacturing, the software suite Amphyon aims to significantly reduce pre-processing costs and take metal AM to the next level of automation. The ASAP-Principle describes four ideal steps on the way to a stable, efficient and reliable process chain: Assessment, Simulation, Adaption and the Process itself. By examining all possible build-up orientations with respect to economical and physical aspects of the process on the Assessment stage, both, limitations of the design and optimal orientations can be calculated. -
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Simpleware
Synopsys
Unlock the power of Simpleware software to seamlessly process 3D & 4D image data from MRI, CT, and micro-CT. Dive into your data with advanced visualization, detailed analysis, and accurate quantification. Create precise models ready for design, simulation, and 3D printing workflows. The Simpleware W-2024.12 release advances Simpleware software's further adoption of AI-assisted segmentation tools and streamlined design features to accelerate all your 3D image processing and analysis workflows. Our industry-leading 3D image processing and model generation platform allows you to create products and workflows from 3D & 4D image data and integrate seamlessly with design and simulation tools. Intuitive interface with quick-and-easy access to all tools and features. Comprehensive analysis of even the most complex 3D image data. Generate design and simulation-ready models of the highest quality. -
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Creo
PTC
Imagine, design, create, and innovate your products better with Creo, 3D CAD/CAM/CAE software, and solutions for product design and development. Now, more than ever, product design and manufacturing teams are expected to create products more efficiently and cost effectively, without sacrificing innovation or quality. Fortunately, Creo delivers the most scalable range of 3D CAD product development packages and tools in today’s market. Creo 7.0 has breakthrough innovations in the areas of generative design, real-time simulation, multibody design, additive manufacturing, and others! Take your products from concept to digital prototype efficiently, precisely, and intuitively with Creo—on the cutting edge of CAD for more than 30 years. With Creo 7.0, PTC amply demonstrates its skill at adding compelling new features to an already robust tool-set using smart partnerships to extend its capabilities even further. -
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VPS-MICRO
VEXTEC Corporation
VPS-MICRO predicts the life of manufactured parts by simulating the behavior of the materials they’re made from. VPS-MICRO is built on three inescapable truths. Durability is not a function of applied stress, alone, but rather a combination of that stress and the material’s reaction to it. The materials we use to build complex components and systems are not homogenous. Computer cycles are shorter and cheaper than physical testing cycles or prototyping. Using these ideas as a foundation, VEXTEC’s VPS-MICRO® is a computational software that accurately accounts for a material’s reaction to the stress imparted upon it, its variability and all its various damage mechanisms, its geometry, and the conditions of its usage over time. The result is a 3D, time and condition-based product simulation that accurately and efficiently reflects the real world physics of how, when and why damage occurs. -
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AdditiveLab
AdditiveLab
Metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) at an industrial level is a fairly new challenge for many companies. Particularly in the early phases of adapting AM technology, companies spend several weeks with trial and error tests to optimize build configurations. This is inefficient and a waste of time and money. The software AdditiveLab helps to cut back the trial and error tests by providing simulation technology that can predict outcomes of metal-deposition AM processes. With AdditiveLab failure-prone regions can be identified efficiently and manufacturing configurations optimized to increase the manufacturing success, and subsequently, save time and money. AdditiveLab was particularly developed to address the engineering needs of AM engineers without requiring simulation knowledge. It provides a very simple user-interface and automated model preparation processes, reducing the state-of-the-art simulation to only a few clicks. -
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Simufact Additive
Hexagon
Simufact Additive is a powerful and scalable software solution for the simulation of metal-based additive manufacturing processes. Discover how to use Simufact Additives to optimize your metal 3D printing / rapid prototyping. Simufact Additive helps you to significantly reduce the number of test prints. Our goal is to provide you with a software solution which helps you produce AM components with repeatable dimensional accuracy first time right. Simufact Additive´s multi-scale approach combines the best approaches in a unique software solution - from an extremely fast mechanical method to a full thermal-mechanical coupled transient analysis with the highest accuracy of simulation results. You can choose the right simulation method for your situation. Simufact Additive is a specialised software solution dedicated exclusively to the simulation of additive manufacturing processes. For the user, this is reflected in a lean operating concept. -
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Digimat-AM
e-Xstream engineering
Digimat-AM is a solution of Digimat Software that simulates the printing process and helps printer manufacturers and end-users to identify manufacturing issues. It also optimizes printing parameters for productivity and final part performance prior to printing the first part. The use of numerical simulation allows you to turn hundreds of trials and errors into a couple of clicks in Digimat-AM. Digimat -AM empowers engineers with a process simulation solution that helps. Simulate the FFF, FDM, SLS and CFF processes of unfilled and reinforced materials Predict the as-printed part warpage, residual stresses and process-induced microstructure. Analyze the coupled thermal-structural response of the process for unfilled and reinforced polymers. Set up the right manufacturing parameters for high precision printing and further bridge the gap between printing process, material and part performances. -
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FLOW-3D
Flow Science
Optimize product designs and reduce time to market with FLOW-3D, a highly-accurate CFD software that specializes in solving transient, free-surface problems. FLOW-3D‘s complete multiphysics suite includes our state-of-the-art postprocessor, FlowSight. FLOW-3D provides a complete and versatile CFD simulation platform for engineers investigating the dynamic behavior of liquids and gas in a wide range of industrial applications and physical processes. FLOW-3D focuses on free surface and multi-phase applications, serving a broad range of industries including microfluidics, bio-medical devices, water civil infrastructure, aerospace, consumer products, additive manufacturing, inkjet printing, laser welding, automotive, offshore, energy and automotive. A uniquely powerful, multiphysics tool, FLOW-3D provides the functionality, ease-of-use and power that helps engineers advance their modeling objectives.
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