It’s been a long week in the CFD world with notable new software releases and financial results (“Q2 was awesome.”) We link to Envenio’s guide to CFD and to a good video about colormaps like the ones we all use to plot our CFD results. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t include news about the Pointwise UGM and our upcoming seminar in Hamburg.

Software

• MantiumFlow is a CFD simulation tool that wraps around OpenFOAM for Windows and Linux. [I suspect it would be a full-time job to track all the various permutations and repackagings of OpenFOAM.]
• DEVELOP3D provides a detailed overview of CADfix 12 including not only geometry model translation, but fixing [hence the name], additive manufacturing tools, faceted to solid model conversion, and more.

Illustration of CADfix’s ability to go from faceted to solid geometry. Image from DEVELOP3D.com. See link above.

• Salome_Meca for Windows including Code_Aster 13.6 is now available.
• Scan&Solve Pro for Rhino 6 has been released for “completely automated, basic structural simulations.”

Pointwise User Group Meeting

• Registration is now open for the Pointwise User Group Meeting 2018 in Fort Worth on 14-15 November.
  • Day 1 is a full day of training on the newest capabilities for CFD mesh generation.
  • Day 2 features presentations by customers, partners, and Pointwise staff on applications, best practices, and more.
• Entries for The Meshy Award are being accepted through 26 September.
  • Someone will take home the coveted Meshy trophy for the mesh judged to have the best visual appeal, originality and uniqueness.
• Presenters and their abstracts are available online for your preview.

Business News

• Tecplot acquired their distributor for Europe and Western Asia.
• Financial news
  • “Q2 was awesome across the CAE landscape.” So begins Monica Schnitger’s summary of Altair’s financial report which begins with $96 million in revenue which includes $73 million of software revenue, the latter a 22% increase.
  • The numbers I reported here for ANSYS’ financial results need to be adjusted slightly because it turns out that there were 27, not 35, deals in excess of $1 million.
• DLR is looking for a PhD engineer or physicist to do CFD and other activities related to combustor designs for future aerospace engines. [I see a lot of job announcements and this is one of the best formatted and most attractive I’ve seen.]

Gratuitous quad mesh on the animated character Baymax from an article about the use of real-time rendering for animated TV. Image from cartoonbrew.com.

Reading

• Knowing that I am a fan of Edward Tufte‘s work and a fan of the paper Rainbow Color Maps (Still) Considered Harmful, alert reader Ray shared with me this link to a “better” colormap (pretty, better represent your data, easier to read by those with colorblindness, and print well in grey scale) called viridis. [Do any of you have a favorite colormap in CFD postprocessing software?]
  • Unapologetic promo: I highly recommend Tufte’s books for everyone making CFD visualizations, plotting data, and giving presentations. Start with The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. [Dang, now I want to re-read all 4 of his books but my to-read list is already a dozen deep. [Someday I’m going to put one of these comments inside a comment inside a comment in an Inception-worthy, nested monologue in which it will be unclear who the audience really is.] Wait, who said that?]]
• Young and old, new and experienced – everyone will find something interesting in Envenio’s Essential Guide to CFD Simulations. [I’m fairly certain that’s a Pointwise structured grid in the section on What is a CFD Mesh? You gotta love the appearance of a nice structured grid.]
• Can a wrong mesh impact your simulation results? [Easy answer: yes. Hard part: define “wrong.”]

Read the case study Meshing Strategies for Propulsion Aerodynamics based on our contributions to the 4th AIAA Propulsion Aerodynamics Workshop.

Applications

• CFD was used to optimize a tug boat’s hull.
• CFD is [no surprise] widely used in Formula 1. But in this article we learn…
  • Reliance on CFD versus wind tunnel in F-1 currently stands at 70:30.
  • Exa is the largest CFD supplier to F-1.
• Join Pointwise in Hamburg, Germany on 18 September for a workshop on mesh generation for Marine and Wind Energy applications. Attendance is free but we ask that you register in advance.

Events

• The data due date for the 2nd AIAA Geometry and Mesh Generation Workshop has been extended to 29 October giving you plenty of time to complete any (or all of the workshop’s three cases). Go to the website today, look for the link under Intent to Participate, and tell us you’re coming.
• DCS Computing’s 3rd CFDEM Conference will be held 14-15 March 2019 in Linz, Austria.
• NUMGRID-2018, the 9th International Conference on Numerical Geometry, Grid Generation, and Scientific Computing, will be held in Moscow on 3-5 December.

Mesh Folding

Most of the time we think of mesh folding as bad. Today I’d like you to enjoy mesh folding with this wonderful, online Origami Simulator. Just be careful not to let the day slip away as you fold.

Origami Simulator