In response to the unanswered need to simplify unstructured mesh generation, while maintaining the accuracy inherent to hexahedral cells, NUMECA has extended its technological advancements to this arena. The initial response for this tool has been so favorable that many new requests are focusing on providing grid output directly for use with a wide variety of other commercial, unstructured solvers.

“HEXPRESS™ represents a revolutionary new concept in automatic unstructured hexahedral grid generation. We are convinced that this tool will drastically reduce your engineering time to produce high quality grids,” states Prof. Charles Hirsch, President of NUMECA International.

A user-friendly, comprehensive, and robust mesh wizard enables rapid, step-by-step grid generation initiated with CAD file importation. A volume-to-surface methodology with automated target mesh sizing rapidly provides an initial grid. Global (and local) mesh refinement can be achieved using surface curvature and/or number of cells between two surfaces as criteria. In addition, a target cell size applied globally or locally can be used to refine the mesh. HEXPRESS™ then automatically snaps the grid points to the CAD geometry and an advanced optimization algorithm is used to maximize grid quality. Finally, clustering is applied near the surfaces to enable the capture of boundary layer effects.

To simplify CAD integration, NUMECA has formed a partnership with CADfix™. The result is a simple and fast file importation for major CAD formats. In addition, a powerful and efficient CAD cleaning tool is available.

No-risk evaluations of the new tool are available.

The most significant new feature is the introduction of the ability to create multiple grid blocks in the design of a simulation. Multi-block gridding in FLOW-3D® will enable users modeling complex flow phenomena to run their simulations faster yet, at the same time, more efficiently use computer resources. Each block will span a certain region of the whole flow domain and contain the standard structured rectangular mesh. Blocks will be able to be nested (one block contained entirely within another block) or linked (blocks are joined at their boundaries). Users will also be able to apply multiple mesh boundary conditions at the domain boundaries.

Using linked blocks, users can reduce problem size (reducing runtimes and saving storage and memory requirements) to create a pattern of flow that is limited to the actual flow domain. Likewise, where a particular area within the flow domain is of most interest to a user, one or more nested blocks of greater resolution can be placed inside a larger block with coarser resolution to allow a higher degree of accuracy of simulation in areas of interest (and again saving running time and storage and memory requirements).

Other major aspects of Version 8.0 are a New STL Viewer; a New General Bubble Model; a New Sediment Scour Model; and a New Dielectric Phenomena Model.

The technology allows BRN sales engineers to bring demos of their CFdesign software directly to the customer's desktops. Customer support will be greatly enhanced by the feature as well.

“Web-based collaboration tools really enhance the customer support experience,” says Jim Span, vice president of Marketing at Blue Ridge Numerics. “Instead of simply talking a customer through a problem over the phone, our customer support engineers remotely drive the CFdesign software installed on the customer’s desktop PC or network. It really enhances the learning process by letting the user visually see how their problems are resolved.”

The machine comes with the new R14000A MIPS processor at 500 or 600 MHz and VPro^TM V10 or V12 graphics. While raw processor speed lags today's hottest PCs, the high-bandwidth architecture and strong graphics performance make this a nice visual workstation.

The introductory price for the system is $11,495 US.

This seminar will show how you can revolutionize your design process with Fluent's computational fluid dynamics software. You'll gain valuable insight and save time and money by using CFD to evaluate and optimize your designs before building a prototype.

Applications include: manufacturing equipment design, manufacturing process analysis, and device designs, including blood handling equipment, catheters, filters, needles, stents, valves and many others.

The seminar will include a technical overview, examples, a live demo and hands-on exercises. Register online now at bioteam@fluent.com. More details can be found at: http://www.fluent.com/solutions/biomedical/bio_seminar.pdf.

EnSight Gold is the high performance version of the company's post-processor EnSight. EnSight Gold is designed to take advantage of parallel processing and virtual reality environments, such as CAVEs, RAVEs, and ImmersaDesks.

The new features within EnSight Gold allow users to visualize datasets of a size barely imaginable just a few years ago.