Paul Bemis, Fluent’s VP of Product Management, notes, “Fluent shares many common clients with UGS and it is critical that both companies partner to meet the needs of these joint customers. Our vision is comprehensive in that we are focusing on the modeling needs of the NX designer and the CFD analyst, simultaneously.”

Initial product plans include the Fluent Connection for NX, which includes a native reader for Parasolid® software – the component software for geometric modeling on which NX is based – and NX enhancements that provide ease of use and facilitate the launching of Fluent’s CFD tools within the NX environment. A two-way, fully-associative live reader will complement the Parasolid reader, enabling optimization looping in the design process. Introducing associativity between the design and analysis models reduces the time required for analysis and design iterations, and allows CFD to be applied much earlier in the design process.

“Of key importance today is simplifying the transfer of engineering data between NX and complementary CAE tools,” according to André Bakker, the FloWizard Product Manager at Fluent Inc. “The requirement to translate NX part and assembly models to some intermediate, generic CAD format has already been eliminated with Fluent’s rapid flow modeling tool, FloWizard 2.0, which is equipped with a Parasolid native reader. FloWizard allows an engineer to evaluate a wide range of design alternatives prior to building the first experimental prototype, reducing product development time and cost. UGS has a truly open simulation business model. By working with UGS and taking advantage of their open framework, our joint clients are assured to receive best-in-class CFD technology optimized for their own CAD environment.”