Editor’s Pick: Integrated CFD Simulation Environment Updated

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

So, I was on this field trip to investigate “the best Buffalo Wings” in town when this earnest young man wearing an awful tie on the barstool next to me asked for my opinion of integrated devices like my new iPhone. I told him that anything that brings together top-shelf, multi-function technology into one convenient unit was the future. Why lug around like a nomad, say, three devices when one can do it all? The same concept applies to your software environment. Why have multiple clean-up, meshing, and post-processing environments when you can have one environment that does it all as well as three discrete environments? Such is the beauty of STAR-CCM+ from CD-adapco.

Recently out in version 5.04, STAR-CCM+ unites the CFD analysis process from CAD to post-processing in a single integrated environment. Now what this means to you is that CAD prep work, meshing, model set up, and design study iterations are all handled from one location rather than the so-called normal “start, stop, load new app, start again” sequencing of the past.

A lot of the work—CAD cleanup, meshing, and boundary condition specification, for example—is performed by STAR-CCM+ as automatically as possible. I mean, you still have to define settings and the model’s got to come from somewhere. It’s not a mind reader. But when your settings from earlier models are automatically carried along to your revision as its initial conditions, you’ve slashed calculation times and your chance to bungle in a typo. STAR-CCM+ even lets you copy and paste meshes or settings between models, a time saver and error breaker of incalculable worth alone. You can create templates to impose best practices on your process.

Those are just some basic characteristics that make STAR-CCM+ worth checking out. Now the skinny on Version 5.04 starts with improved performance across your CFD simulation workflow. It’s faster all around from model preparation to mesh generation to solver time. Plots are almost 50 percent faster than previous versions, and new meshing morphing technology lets you handle extremely large models with alacrity. It has extended 3D CAD functionality such as lofting, and CD-adapco has installed a new materials database.

You can read all about the updates to STAR-CCM+ in today’s Pick of the Week write-up. Still, what I recommend is that you hit the link at the end of the write-up and go to the multimedia gallery. You’ll have to register to take in a webinar, but the videos and still images are registration-free. Do not skip the link to the main STAR-CCM+ page in the last sentence of the write-up. The 7-minute demo video on that page explains better than I can just what an integrated environment can mean to your CFD workflow.

In a nutshell, STAR-CCM+ is how things are going to be. Good stuff.

Thanks, Pal. — Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Read today’s Pick of the Week write-up.