I'm also in simulation software! Wondering which models you are finding helpful, the models I'm using for general SWE skills are horrible at our simulations and even basic physics/engineering calculation and intuition
I use Claude Opus 4.8 almost exclusively. I have had fairly good experiences with it. One time it derived an entirely novel simulation method different than anything in literature by combining its knowledge about how problems in other fields with similar underlying mathematical structure are solved. That was a bit of a Jacobian Conjecture moment for me.
I'm in the same field and I find GPT to be better at understanding physics conceptually but Claude is better at writing numerical code. I use cursor so many of my sessions start in GPT and switch to Claude.