October 2005

By DE Editors

Editor’s Pick of the Week—October 19, 2005

Entry-Level RP Unit Has Speed, High Resolution, and Low Cost
Z Corp. also announces new high-performance composite material
Monday was a busy day the Z Corp. (Burlington, MA) users group meetingin Portsmouth, NH. Z Corporation announced four new products, includingits new ZPrinter 310 Plus 3D printer, an entry-level unit offeringhigh-end features at low-cost. In addition to the ZPrinter 310 Plus,the company announced new a high-performance composite rapidprototyping material, new software, and a new material recycling unit.

The ZPrinter 310 Plus is a monochrome 3D printer that can leverage thecompany’s range of single color options. Basic system features includea high-definition 3D print head and a heated build chamber. ZPrinter310 Plus offers a 300 x 450 dpi resolution, which, says the company, is50 percent finer than its predecessor, the ZPrinter 310.

Z Corp.‘s new zp130 composite material is a multipurpose powderdesigned to work with heated build chambers. With zp130, Z Corp. saysthe ZPrinter 310 Plus as well as its entire line of 3D printers, cannow produce parts up to 25 percent faster and deliver improved featuredefinition and richer colors. Among the zp130’s material advantages arelower binder usage and higher early strength.
When coupled with the new z130 composite material, the ZPrinter 310Plus’s heated build chamber lets you print complex geometries andthinner-walled parts quickly as well as in color. Moreover, parts takeless time to process, so you can start passing them around the officesooner. Of particular interest to long-time users of 3D printers arethe ZPrinter 310 Plus’s use of enhanced algorithms that provide forsmoother bottom-facing surfaces.

Z Corp has also improved the software that comes with the ZPrinter 310Plus with better service menus and material selection menus.Additionally, it comes with ZEdit 1.0, a new color and graphicsapplication to maximize the use of color in rapid prototyping. ZEditlets you enhance computer-aided design files with color, texture maps,engineering labels, and notes, and to print those annotations right onthe surface of a physical 3D model. .ZEdit, a standalone application,ships with all Z Corp. 3D printers.

In the final new product announcement of the day, the company alsointroduced the ZD5 Powder Recycling Station. The ZD5 lets you reclaimand reuse excess materials from your rapid-prototyping runs.

Shipments of the new ZPrinter 310 Plus begin late this month. It costs$25,900 or $27,800 with ZD5 Powder Recycling System. To get the fullstory on Monday’s announcements from Z Corp. itself, click here to gothe ZPrinter 310 Plus page or click here to go to the ZEdit page.

Editor’s Pick of the Week—October 12, 2005

CFD Solver for Pros and Rookies

CD-adapco built new app from ground up

CD-adapco (Melville, NY and London, UK) has released of version 1.08 ofits STAR-CCM+ CFD analysis software. The company designed STAR-CCM+from the ground up with the intention of making it easy for novices touse as well robust enough to solve the power user’s compute-intensiveanalyses requiring tens of millions of cells.

With STAR-CCM+ 1.08, you can simulate all flow types. A key to itsspeed and power is its polyhedral cell approach to meshing. Thepolyhedral cell technology approach provides quick and easy meshing,improved solution accuracy, and faster solutions than other methods.Further, it requires less memory than hexahedral or tetrahedral meshes.
STAR-CCM+ has an object-based user interface that you populate onlywith the features that are activated—nothing extraneous appears in theinterface to annoy you. The interface guides you through the set-up andanalysis of a CFD problem but, unlike most interfaces, STAR-CCM+eschews the “fill-in-the-form” approach. Rather, it poses a sequence ofrelevant questions until it has all the answers needed to run youranalysis. According to the company, this also means that the solver isalmost certain to run.

STAR-CCM+ uses the latest numerical algorithms, including an advancedpre-conditioned coupled and segregated solver as well as advancedmethods such as embedded refinement and arbitrary interfacing. It alsooffers visualization and dynamic steering during analysis, enabling youto butt in during a simulation and, for example, change controlparameters (like time-step size or underrelaxation factors), boundaryconditions, or particular models. A variety of reports and monitors areuser-definable, including forces over certain boundary regions, area ormass averaged quantities, residual norms, and variable values at agiven point or line in space. STARCCM+ also contains a suite ofturbulence models.

STAR-CCM+‘s polyhedral cell functionality can import meshes from mostleading grid-generation systems, including those of STAR-CD, ICEM,GridGen, and Fluent/Gambit. The software also embeds within most majorMCAD systems, and it can run on Windows XP machines. Additionally, itruns on dual-core workstations, high-performance computers, and most64-bit Linux-class systems. Version 1.08 also supports supercomputerMPIs (message passing interfaces).

For complete details and to sign up for a downloadable demo, click here. To go to the CD-adapco website, click here.



 

Editor’s Pick of the Week—October 5, 2005

Modeling, Analysis System Upgraded

Version 7.0 extends GAUSS with more than 30 new functions

Aptech Systems (Maple Valley, WA) has released version 7.0 of its GAUSSmathematical and statistical modeling and analysis system, a fastmatrix programming language designed for computationally intensivetasks. GAUSS is suitable for analysts, engineers, scientists, andresearchers who do not have the time required to develop programs in Cor FORTRAN or who find that most statistical or mathematicalapplications lack the flexibility or power to perform complicated,large-scale analysis problems.
Aptech has advanced the core functionality within GAUSS with a varietyof new and improved statistical, mathematical, and matrix handlingroutines. In total more, than 30 new functions have been added, pushingthe total number of built-in math functions to more than 400, includingLINPACK, EISPACK and BLAS routines as well as factorizations,decompositions, eigenvalues, and distributions.

Among the key performance enhancements in version 7.0 are StructurePointers. Structure Pointers allow you to avoid unnecessary datacopying when passing structures in and out of procedures, making itpossible to write faster programs. A new data set type, GAUSS DataArchives, holds multiple matrices, N-dimensional arrays, strings, andstring arrays.

New functions in GAUSS 7.0 include a numerical integration procedurefor integrals over infinite intervals and new multivariate normal andstudent’s t cumulative distribution functions. Also provided are threenew thread-safe functions and five new functions for creating andopening data files.

Also, GAUSS 7.0 now supports multiple library paths and files largerthan 2GB. Its documentation has been redesigned. Graphing optionsavailable include 2D, 3D, surface, contour, polar and log graphs, aswell as bar graphs, histograms, and box graphs.

GAUSS 7.0, available now, runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris, andother platforms. For more, contact Aptech Systems. Click here for apartial list of features and functions within GAUSS 7.0. Click here to go to the Aptech Systems website.