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My point exactly. And welcome BTW Islander!
The problems with FEM analysis is that forces and angles still have to be assumed. You pick a direction and a force and a input function and the software plot's your results. Sure it will show you where the stress concentrations are but only for that particular angle of inpact. In order to properly "design" an a-arm this way would take thousands of hours running simulations from all angles with varying loads. The sum of all these results would have to be reviewed to determine the proper tradeoff's.Building a set of arms and driving the car until it they break provides the same information as the program it just takes more work. Lesson's learned during years of experience and testing will always be more valuable than a few weeks simulation with a computer.
BULLSHIT (again) your point was that it's all WILD ASS GUESSES, which it is not. I take Islander's point and in fact it was considered in my opinion.
this thread came out of a professional build to differenciate between "engineered" and "drawn up".