Events

• Calling it an “experience economy,” Dassault Systemes talked about the importance of delivering a good user experience beyond simply having the best product in this Desktop Engineering article about the COE Annual Experience and TechniFair.
• The preliminary agenda for the OpenFOAM Workshop 2015 has been announced.
• In Desktop Engineering’s review of the 2015 Americas Altair Technology Conference you’ll find a video teaser about user interface changes coming in HyperWorks Next Generation.
• Keynote speakers have been announced for ESI’s 3rd OpenFOAM User Conference 2015.
• The 3rd Symposium on OpenFOAM in Wind Energy will be held 15-17 June at the Politecnico di Milano.
• Here’s the latest news on FLOW-3D’s two upcoming 2015 FLOW-3D Americas Users Conferences.

Software

Screen capture from a video illustration of STAR-CCM+’s new color maps. Image from CD-adapco. See link below.

• STAR-CCM+ includes new, improved, and customizable color maps for visualizing your CFD results. [This is good stuff and a nice coincidence considering my recent attendance at Edward Tufte’s course, one of those guys who hates the rainbow color map. If only they hadn’t slapped that hideous “New” badge on the image.]
• CD-adapco announced an initiative in the area of particle flow physics.
• 3DX is an online community for browsing, downloading, and exchanging 3D models.

Miscellaneous

This image of a ship hull’s mesh is from MarineLink.com and was generated using CD-adapco’s tools. See link below.

• From MarineLink.com comes a look at numerical towing tanks.
• Monica Schnitger breaks down Exa‘s Q1 performance and shows us that their license revenue was $12 million (+5%) and their project revenue was $2.5 million (+20%). [Please be reminded that following Exa is important as they’re the only publicly traded pure CFD company. That I’m aware of at least.]
• Rescale launched ScaleX Enterprise, a version of their cloud HPC product that can be deployed within a company (i.e. a turnkey private cloud).

Pointwise News

• Pointwise Version 17.3 R2 was released. It includes new features for generating overset structured hex grids using the hyperbolic PDE-based extrusion method (new boundary conditions and wider topology support).
• Pointwise V17.3 R2 is also compatible with the Leap Motion Controller for touch-free image manipulation (pan, zoom, rotate). And you can earn one of those devices for free: see the details here.
• We have a webcast coming up on 10 June that will introduce you into making Pointwise compatible with your CFD solver: Intro to Plugin Development.
• If you’ll be attending AIAA Aviation in Dallas in June there will be many ways for us to learn, explore, and mingle.
  • A Let’s Talk Meshing Workshop on Sunday that’ll cover the latest features and what’s coming in the future.
  • A reception Sunday night.
  • Two technical presentations.
  • Booth #307 in the exhibit hall.
  • See our Aviation page for all the details.

[Yes, I toot my own horn every once in a while.]

Pixelated Fur

I won’t even attempt to spin the click-bait title Pixelated Fur into something mesh-related. But it does follow along with the trend I’ve been observing about digital ideas in analog art.

Daniel Rozin has created for your experiential pleasure a mirror of sorts; one that reflects your image in discrete furry black and white pixels. 928 of them to be exact, coupled with a Microsoft Kinect. Just walk up and see yourself reflected in soft, cuddly “furxels.” [Copyright © John Chawner, 2015, All rights reserved.]

Daniel Rozin, PomPom Mirror, 2015. Image from Visual News. See link above.

Bonus: Remember Artsy’s auction of algorithmic and code-related artwork? All lots sold. I’m having trouble finding a comprehensive list of final sale prices but is appears a handwritten 4-line “Hello World” program by Brian Kernighan went for $4,000.