Upfront Design Studies Made Easier

By DE Editors

CFdesign 2010 enables design engineers to set up a single or multi-scenario design studies to help them make decisions that satisfy pass-fail, quality, and innovation objectives.

Blue Ridge Numerics, Inc. (BRNI; Charlottesville, VA),  has announced CFdesign 2010, the newest version of its upfront CFD (computational fluid dynamics) application. The company describes CFdesign 2010 as the first CFD application to provide a comprehensive, CAD-driven design study environment to enable engineers to achieve pass-fail and what-if engineering scenarios as part of a highly efficient workflow. With the release of version 2010, BRNI also announces that CFdesign supports the new Core i7 processor from Intel and a new multi-pointCFdesign Answer System within its Customer Portal.

CFdesign is an integrated, associative solution for users of major MCAD systems that enables design engineers to perform fluid flow and thermal simulations early and often during the product development process. CFD expertise is not required to use CFdesign. CFdesign Version 2010 extends this ‘analyze early and often’ capacity with new single- and multi-scenario design study capabilities that you can use to compare different designs and critical values quickly. BRNI describes CFdesign 2010 as streamlining the decision-making process through a flexible environment that enables you to create and manage flow and thermal design studies. Design feedback is expressed in standard engineering terms, which, the company says, helps you locate critical information quickly and without digging through reams of CFD output.

CFdesign 2010’s Design Study Manager feature allows users to create and manage multiple designs and scenarios from any MCAD environment,  such as Inventor (shown here).

“Traditional and embedded CFD products historically have not supported engineering design studies, as they have been built for a single analysis as the engineering objective, making multi-scenario design studies too time intensive, impractical, and at times impossible. As a result, very few companies are getting the business impact they need from a CFD investment,”  said Derrek Cooper, product manager, Blue Ridge Numerics, in a press release. “CFdesign 2010 enables design engineers to quickly create and compare different scenarios and make important product design decisions to satisfy pass-fail,  quality, and innovation objectives early in the development process.”

CFdesign provides direct modeling of external flow volumes around CAD models and direct modeling of mesh refinement regions. What this means, according to BRNI, is that you grab a handle and push and pull until you have encapsulated a region to refine the mesh or created a flow volume around a CAD model. Key features of CFdesign 2010 include a digital prototyping control panel for creating, adding, changing, and managing multi-scenario design studies; the ability to create new simulation scenarios with a right-click; the ability to select or define project-specific critical performance values;  critical value summaries of 3D points, collection of points, a plane or a part location; and the ability to generate x,y plots and graphs.

BRNI’s new multipointCFdesign Answer System in the Customer Portal offers several components designed to deliver answers to your questions in multiple ways to ensure that you receive the information you need in the format you prefer. The new Answer System includes a new online help system, a knowledge base, CFD-tv with short video tutorials, and user forums.

This image shows flow through a hydraulic actuator valve created with CFdesign 2010.

The new DecisionCenter feature in CFdesign 2010 provides a decision-making environment that allows users to compare critical values from multiple scenarios through summary tables, graphs,  and plots.

CFdesign 2010 integrates with Autodesk Inventor, CATIA,  CoCreate, NX, Pro/ENGINEER, SolidWorks, Solid Edge, and SpaceClaim. It runs on 32- and 64-bit Windows XP and Vista workstations. With its new Intel Core i7 processor support, CFdesign 2010 supports up to four cores out of the box, with support for additional cores available with the CFdesign HPC Module option.

Current users can download CFdesign 2010 directly from the BRNI Customer Portal. For further information, visit Blue Ridge Numeric on the web.

Click here to see the details on the base CFdesign system and all expansion modules.

See (registration free) how CFdesign 2010 can help you make design decisions.

Watch a 3-minute video (registration free) on setting up multiple design studies.

Click here for a (registration free) video on the new CFdesign Answer System.

See why DE Editors selected CFdesign 2010 as their Pick of the Week.