Numerical simulation can be complicated and scary. Often, it is the exclusive realm of engineers and the highly trained, but it doesn't have to be that way! Simulation has a lot to offer to anyone interested in investigating the world around them and while the basics may seem overwhelming at first, it really can be valuable, and even fun to have a working knowledge of the steps involved. This presentation is designed to prepare you with a basic grounding in simulation and how it works so that you too can go away and build your own simulations, or more realistically, use simulation tools (such as Ansys) to model every day things. In particular this presentation will take you through an example script of PyMAPDL (our Open Source Python interface for Ansys' original product: Mechanical APDL), modelling a simple 2D bridge scenario.