The ADAMS software marketed by MSC Software is one of several special-purpose, third-party programs used to simulate the dynamics of multibody systems.

A drawback of the ADAMS program is that all components are assumed to be rigid. In the ADAMS program, tools to model component flexibility exist only for geometrically simple structures. To account for the flexibility of a geometrically complex component, ADAMS relies on data transferred from finite-element programs such as Mechanical APDL. The Ansys-ADAMS Interface is a tool provided by Ansys, Inc. to transfer data from the Mechanical APDL program to the ADAMS program.

For more information, see Appendix A: Rigid Body Dynamics and the Ansys-Adams Interface in the Substructuring Analysis Guide.

Current versions of Mechanical APDL support multibody analysis without the need for third-party tools. Also, Mechanical APDL allows both rigid and flexible components.