FEA? Are the ramp designs that you are considering indeterminant? Are you concerned with fatigue life due to weight restrictions and the number of loading cycles? .... At work, we used CATIA to design and solid model every part of the aircraft to support a fully integrated electronic process. But, our stress/fatigue/DaDT engineers preferred hand calculations over the integrated FEA resources at hand. FEA was only worth the time and effort on a few parts where fatigue life/weight/fracture ... made the investment in FEA worth it. Typically, there is one design condition that drives the design for a part/assembly (configuration, material selection/sizing, ...) and it can be characterized in a static loading/stress analysis, with the remaining loading/sizing aspects being a fallout. Plus, these hand calculations were typically in-hand before the solid modeling was completed to feed the FEA tools.
Your work on Moonshine and Moonshine Motel have consistently demonstrated that the new ramp will be thought through and executed with skill-precision. CAD and FEA are tools that may be of aid to you, but your standards will ensure top results with or without 'em.
Good luck and please allow me to apologize for tossing my two cents in.
