Visualization

• FieldView 15.1 is now available and includes surface flow lines and animated particle paths.
• EnSight 10.1.5.a is now available and includes threaded pathlines.
• A special thanks to our friends at Mentor Graphics for remembering their American cousins on July 4th with a Boston Tea Party themed simulation that resulted in the beautiful image shown below.

Streamlines in a teapot done with a line integral convolution method. Image from Mentor Graphics. See link above.

Events

• The 5th Metacomp Symposium has been scheduled for 15-17 September 2015 in Pasadena. Abstracts for presentations are due 04 August.
• On a related note, Metacomp’s CFD++ is one of the solvers featured in Desktop Engineering’s article on Expanding the Search for CFD Solutions.
• The proceedings of the 6th Beta CAE International Conference are available online for you to download.
• On a related note, Beta CAE released ANSA v15.3.1.

Screen capture from a CD-adapco simulation of a Hawker Hurricane water landing. [Feeds my love of WWII-era aircraft.] Click image for video.

Reading

• ANSYS’ blog wants us to “think big” about the future of simulation. [I had a boss 30 years ago whose vision for CFD was that you should be able to sit down at a workstation and simply fly the plane via real-time simulation. Nice, but not actionable. Like having a vision for medicine which is “prevent all diseases.”]
• GrabCAD’s blog says now is the time for all CAD to be “free.”
  • “Money has to be made somewhere, and certainly should be when value is provided.”
  • “When we say free CAD, we mean free to use indefinitely, but under restrictions.”
  • “…why could customers keep paying? You make it about data, support, and deployment flexibility…”

Miscellaneous

Not CFD, but a cool simulation of solar plasma nonetheless. Video by NCSA. Click image for video.

• SimScale is looking for the next #F1SimStar, i.e. the person who can make the most impressive visualization of airflow around a Formula-1 car. Deadline is “12.07.2015.” [As an American, I have no idea whether that’s December 7th or July 12th.] To support this contest they have posted three videos and other resources about simulations.
• TechClarity wants you to participate in their survey if you’ve recently changed or are planning to change CAD tools. You might win a $20 Amazon gift card.
• IBM’s 7 nanometer computer chip promises 4x the power of current designs. [Maybe Moore’s Law isn’t dead after all.]
• Is the STL file format on it’s way out? DEVELOP3D shares news about the 3MF Consortium‘s efforts to promote a modern file format for 3D printing and other apps.
• Did you know there is a mesh generation forum on ResearchGate?

Sometimes a Banana is Just a Banana – And Other Times It’s a Mesh

Artist Dan Cretu has embarked on a series of wood-carvings of bananas that feature a mesh motif. There’s a joke in here somewhere about “banana included for scale” but I’ll leave that to you. [Joke from SNL included intentionally.] You can find more of Cretu’s banana sculptures here.

Correction: The artist informs me that the sculptures are not wood and that they are all rotten now.

Dan Cretu, Bananametric, 2015. Image from That’s Nerdalicious. See link above.

Bonus: From Monet to Riley, the role of geometry in abstract painting. As Mondrian said, he didn’t want to be limited to making mere imitations of the external world.