This week’s CFD news includes a survey to take on simulation in the cloud and a good article faceted geometry models for 3-D printing (and the rest of us). Fans of CFD history will enjoy the interview with John Swanson. Plus there’s all the usual software releases, events, and CFD applications. The image shown here illustrates some of the expertise of a new CFD company, Upstream CFD.
The Ledes
- It’s nice to welcome to the commercial CFD world Upstream CFD, a Berlin-based company focused on sharing their expertise in turbulence modeling, aeroacoustics, and more.
- Digital Engineering magazine is running a survey on Cloud-Based Engineering Simulation Applications. Please take a few minutes to share your opinions. [I should’ve posted this last week with all the other cloud stuff but I saw it only after pressing Publish.]
- I’ve been thinking a lot about 3-D printing recently so it’s no surprise that Tech Soft 3D’s article 3D-Printing File Formats Must Evolve With The Industry caught my eye. The article kept my attention with the LOL assessment that STL files are “little more than a giant soup of triangles.” [Soup might be too generous – gruel might be more apt.] But the article blows right by the 3MF file format (a vast improvement over STL) to recognition of the need for 3-D printing to use BREP geometry models. [For the record, as much as other people disparage IGES as a BREP NURBS exchange format, I do the same for STL. IMO, CFD people use STLs as a geometry model because it looks like a mesh that they already know how to work with whereas BREPs are much more complex and deemed not worth the effort.]

A very pretty surface mesh from Tech Soft 3D’s article about 3D printing file formats linked to above. Image from medium.com.
Events & Interviews
- The agenda for the next week’s Annual SU2 Developers Meeting has been posted.
- You’ve still got a few days until 10 May to submit your abstract for TFAWS 2019.
- IGA 2019 will be held in Munich on 18-20 September. Your one-page abstract is due 12 May.
- On the PADT blog you’ll find an interview with ANSYS founder John Swanson.
- The History of Vim. [You use Vim as your text editor, right?]
Stuff on GitHub
- Need some geometry models for testing your application? Look no further than the ABC Dataset consisting of one million models available in STEP, Parasolid, STL, and OBJ formats.
- The Unstructured Grid Adaptation Working Group (UGAWG) maintains a web presence on GitHub including test cases an benchmarks.
- Also on GitHub is libCEED, a “low-level API for efficient high-order discretization methods.” More on CEED here.
- [Based on how most GitHub sites look, I think GitHub is the current incarnation of Myspace (or worse – Geocities) for engineers and scientists. That’s just my opinion – I could be wrong. But free is free.]
Application
- Verification and Validation of OpenFOAM for High-Lift Aircraft Flows (in which we read that it comes within 3% of lift and drag coefficient results from STAR-CCM+). Purchase required.

The latest in my series on gratuitous use of facets in advertising comes from our friends at Northrop Grumman who meshed this doggo for use in a discussion of common infrared countermeasures. Image from northropgrumman.com. source
CFD for…
Software
- Beta CAE released v19.1.2 of their software suite.
- FEATool Multiphysics 1.10 was released.
- MSC Apex Iberian Lynx Feature Pack 1 was released for aircraft conceptual modeling [but included here just because of the name – phew].
Transcendent Grid
Sometimes I just see something that I like, something that is pleasing to the eye. When I find out it’s a weaving that brings together my interest in grids (for what is a weaving other than a grid of threads) with my lovely wife’s interest in the textile arts I’m even happier.
Claire Campbell Park has been weaving since the 70s and is influenced by Mark Rothko and Josef Albers. I suspect that’s what initially drew me to the work shown below. According to the article on The American Scholar, she seeks to make tangible a transcendent experience of peace and hope, of space and color. I’d say she’s succeeding.

Claire Campbell Park, Book of Hours: Dark of Solace. source
P.S. Sorry for any typos. The spell-checker in WordPress seems to have disappeared.