Editor’s Pick: CFD Fully Embedded in PTC Pro/ENGINEER

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

This is a good one for you Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire users.

Before its acquisition by Mentor Graphics, Flomerics—now known as the Mechanical Analysis Division of Mentor Graphics—built a name for itself with its powerful yet easy-to-use CFD software. A key to FloEFD has been that it allows you to optimize your designs quickly because it does not wear you down with all that figuring out complex numerical schemes and creating meshes. The just-announced FloEFD Pro v9.3.1 takes powerful and speed-of-use a step further by embedding fully within the Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire environment,  letting you analyze and design concurrently.

What does all this mean for you? Well, for one, FloEFD Pro lets you work within the Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire environment and with native Pro/ENGINEER geometry. No translations or that sort of fumbling around. But what this really means is that you maintain one set of data across your product design process, which will simplify everything dramatically. And, better yet,  it means that you can play with your design, instantly analyze it, and generate multiple what-if analyses without a heck of a lot of fussing.

Secondly, both applications share a common user interface. This means that when you switch gears to run a simulation, you are not switching personalities and reaching for a user manual. You’re still a designer, but you’re running CFD analyses from within your comfort zone. For that matter, FloEFD has an analysis wizard to lead you through the steps of problem setup, cutting down the learning curve to a bare minimum. After you’re finished running your analysis, it’s point-and-click visualization. You can even create and distribute animated results or generate reports in Excel and Word, including plots, without much effort.

By embedding completely with Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, FloEFD Pro v9.3.1 is said to be an industry first. You can learn more about it in today’s Pick of the Week write-up. Make it a point to hit the link at the end of the report and check out the video (no registration required). You can even sign up for a trial version. As I said, this is a good one for you Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire users. (And, BTW, the company has a similar version for CATIA.) Good use of your time.

Thanks, Pal.—Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Read today’s Pick of the Week.