Well, I suppose that title is a bit presumptuous as only you can judge whether the year was “fine” or just “meh” as the kids say.

What You Read the Most

In case you’re curious, the most-read posts on Another Fine Mesh during 2012 were:

1. There’s More to CFD Convergence Than Reading the Manual (orig. date 7 Apr 2011). I’m a little surprised this post has had that much staying power.
2. Accuracy, Convergence, and Mesh Quality (orig. date 5 Jul 2012). This article is also one of the most popular in our newsletter, The Connector. This is a topic on which there should be more information in the future.
3. This Week in CFD (orig. date 17 Feb 2012). This version of our weekly feature is likely most popular because of Symscape’s poll in which respondents claimed that software price was the top culprit holding back the adoption of CFD.
4. Printing Grids in 3D (orig. date 12 Mar 2012). 3D printing is all the rage now and we hopped on the bandwagon early in 2012 by writing a CAE plugin that exported the grid to a 3D printer. We had a mixed bag of successes and failures which is why we haven’t released the plugin yet for public use. There’s a 3D printed mesh of a grid on a sphere sitting on my keyboard now. But we’re really pushing the boundaries of the technology because when you inflate all the grid lines into tiny cylinders things get complex real fast. But we’re happy to see that people are interested in reading about it.
5. This Week in CFD (orig. date 27 Jan 2012). After re-reading this post, it’s not clear to me what makes this one of the most popular. Perhaps the announcement of Stanford’s SU2?

How You Found Us

It’s also interesting to see how you found us. The top referring sites to Another Fine Mesh during 2012 were:

1. LinkedIn
2. Twitter
3. CFD Online
4. Pointwise.com
5. Facebook

I think this is a positive endorsement of social media and CFD.

On to 2013

We really appreciate your readership and feedback. When a guy like Prof. Z.J. Wang writes that he “particularly likes Another Fine Mesh” it makes the effort worthwhile. We will continue to try to deliver valuable (interesting? amusing?) content during 2013. Trust me, I have a deepening respect for people who write for a living. It’s difficult enough to write something intelligent and useful (as you’ve no doubt seen) but to do so on a regular basis is quite daunting.

What would you like to read in 2013? A particular topic area? For example, more how-to articles about Pointwise. Or a general type of article? For example, more interviews with people in the CFD business. Please share your ideas with us by sending an email to blog@pointwise.com.

So I’ll leave you with this art installation that only a mesher would love. Willem Besselink creates these surface meshes from 3D plots of his personal data.

Best wishes for a productive 2013. If you’re at the AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting next week please seek us out and say hello.