The fundamental business need that a Tutorial application addresses is to improve product design processes. Product simulation is required earlier in the design cycle in order to shorten cycle time. A well written Tutorial application makes it easy for anyone to run a simulation. Thus, simulations can be performed early with rough design estimates. This enables the designers to run more simulations earlier in the design process and identify poor designs earlier. The simulation expert is then relieved of supporting the design cycle with this simulation and able to focus on other more challenging analyses.

A Tutorial application enables novice users and design engineers to perform complex simulation without training. The single user interface form (see below) can explain each task necessary for a complex simulation using words the user will understand. The error checking and logical decision making available will assure the application author that the user is within the design space.

The Tutorial application environment allows the author to capture and leverage engineering process knowledge and simulation expertise throughout the enterprise. The author can control the application to guarantee that the best practices they used to create the application will be used every time the application is used.

Tutorial applications can be used as an instructional aid to guide a user step by step through the Patran forms used to create a model and analyze the results. The Patran forms can be populated with appropriate values so that the instructional process can be reduced to a simple guide or the values can be changed so that the Tutorial can be a tool to explore various experiments with Patran.

Demonstrations can be created using the Tutorial software. This allows automated process used with the actual software and a presentation projector to highlight new or specific features of the Patran software.