At next week’s International Meshing Roundtable (Orlando, 13-16 October) I will have the pleasure and honor of joining an esteemed cast on the Professional Development Panel for students and postdocs. [“One of these panelists is not like the others, one of these panelists doesn’t belong.”]
Some of the issues we panelists have been asked to be prepared to discuss include the reasons for choosing a career in meshing and computational simulation, what type of early career challenges might one face, and how one manages their on-going career.
Similar issues are contemplated by an industry survey being conducted by Lifecycle Insights on Simulation Driven Design. The results collected from this survey will inform us on how simulation (and mesh generation) are employed withing various organizations and point us toward the future of this discipline.
And just for taking time for this 20-minute survey you’ll receive Lifecycle Insights’ 40-page ebook titled The Engineering Manager’s Survival Guide. Even if you’re not a manager (yet) you’ll learn something about how these issues are being addressed in the workplace.
What could be better for a student or postdoc than learning how their future manager thinks?
Full disclosure: Pointwise is sponsoring this survey.
I did the survey. The question I had the biggest problem with was about whether getting the right mesh was an obstacle or prevented simulation during conceptual design. In my experience it’s not an all or nothing thing. Some simulation is viable because the meshing can be highly automated, and some is not because it is still very man-hour intensive. Specifically I’m thinking of cartesian grid methods for the Euler equations being very useful in conceptual design because the meshing process is nearly “push button,” and the problem size is small (fast solves), but RANS solutions still require significant investment in the grid and solves take longer (or cost more).
Thanks for doing the survey. Because the survey covers such a wide spectrum of technologies related to simulation driven design it’s hard to have all the questions delve fully into the relevant details. Hopefully, the results will still reveal some high-level trends.