In this last edition of This Week in CFD of 2017 you’ll find insight on Mentor’s Cartesian-based approach to mesh generation, tips on visualizing your simulation results, and an update on the Exascale Computing Project. And the inevitable “more.”
Geometry & Meshing
- Mentor offers the white paper SmartCells – Enabling Fast & Accurate CFD (registration required). See image below.
- From FEA for All comes this video tip for simplifying shell models for meshing.
- As reported by SolidSmack, SketchUp is freely available online for those needing easy access to a browser-based 3-D modeler.

An example of Mentor’s SmartCell technology in action as applied to a benchmark case for external automotive flows. Image from the white paper referenced above.
Solvers & More
- Cray profiled the lead developer of GE’s in-house CFD code.
- For the aerospace geeks, here’s an annotated version of the photograph of the Wright Brothers’ first flight.
- Science at Home delivers a turbulence game to promote awareness, if not understanding, of the “most important unsolved problem in classical physics.” If you prefer not to install the game, here’s notes on the fluid simulation behind the game.
- GeekoCFD is no more.
Computing & Visualization

Here are 6 tips for improving your CFD visualizations. #3 Streamlines are the most misused visualization method. Image from bdcnetwork.com.
- From SC17 comes this recorded presentation on The U.S. DOE Exascale Computing Project – Goals and Challenges. One challenge is how to ensure that when these systems come online in 2021 there are software applications that can use them effectively.
Looks Back at 2017
- Convergent Science profiles their 2017 milestones including a headcount now exceeding 100 in their 20th year of operation. [Note: The small image at the top of this article is cropped from an image in Convergent Science’s article about work they’re doing with GE on combustor simulation.]
- Congratulations to SimScale for reaching the 100,000 user milestone as reported in SimScale in 2017: The Year in Review.
- In Engineering.com’s year in review they report the publication of over 2,000 stories and 20 million unique visitors.
An Amazing Tetrahedron
To ease you into the new year’s weekend [if you aren’t already on vacation/holiday], here’s a mental challenge. Unflatten this tet and find a path through the maze from one dot to the other.

Four-Sided-Story, originally seen on Futility Closet.