The speed in which CFdesign uses native MCAD models to analyze and qualitatively compare design variations is what sets CFdesign apart from traditional CFD applications. On average, implementing CFdesign can reduce the time it takes to develop, test, and prove a new product design by 70% while also reducing the costs associated with staff time and materials by 65%.

The Granite ONE Interoperability Kernel facilitates the creation and exchange of feature-based solid models using the same industrial strength algorithms and powerful associativity mechanisms at the heart of Pro/ENGINEER, a recognized leader at modeling complex geometry. Independent software vendors are now able to incorporate the Granite One platform into their own products and immediately have automatic native file access to the geometry of all other Granite One applications.

PTC's Granite ONE Interoperability Kernel has now been licensed to more than 25 software OEM's as well as several Engineering and Manufacturing Companies.

Update (Thursday 07 Nov 2002)

Fluent has said that they will utilize Granite ONE to provide interoperability between a range of MCAD solutions and its electronics cooling thermal management software, Icepak. The integration of Granite ONE will enable Icepak users to share native Pro/ENGINEER part and assembly data. This data, or the data from any other Granite Application will drive associative update to Icecad applications. Icepak will be further enhanced by leveraging Granite for neutral file exchange (e.g.,IGES, STEP) with other CAD solutions.

With smaller y-plus
The turbulent fluid
Solidifies.

Wolf-Heinrich Hucho from Germany was selected at random from our list of subscribed users. Mr. Hucho is editor and co-author of the book Aerodynamics of Road Vehicles. He is a free-lancing consultant and techical writer with background and interest in aerodynamics in general, and aerodynamics of bluff bodies in specific. He has just published a book (in German) titled "Aerodynamics of Bluff Bodies".

Congratulations, Mr. Hucho!

Release 3.1 of the Virtual Vantage visualization software expands the supported dataset formats to include Tecplot 3D datasets. This is important as any simulation software that can export data into Tecplot's FEBLOCK=BRICK format can now use Virtual Vantage software for post-processing. In addition, the Virtual Vantage 3.1 product adds isosurface viewing in wire frames to its array of streamline, plane, and surface-based visualization objects. Finally, all Virtual Vantage releases now support stereo on Linux systems with stereo-enabled Quadro 4 graphics cards from NVIDIA.

A number of conveniences for the user have been added as well. These include:

• contour color maps which are automatically optimized at the click of a button
• streamlines that are counted as they pass through selection planes
• an expanded and user-configurable list of shortcut keys on alternative input devices (i.e., Spaceball and SpaceMouse)
• user alerts to guide productivity
• improvements to the already highly intuitive user interface

“We wanted to design a tool to automate the process of running and monitoring our CFD tools, Cart3D, and Overflow, ” explained Stuart Rogers, senior scientist on the AeroDB project. “This idea fused with our goal of bringing these applications onto the IPG and demonstrating their usability.”

In its initial trial, AeroDB scripts were used to execute and monitor cases for a large parameter study on a Liquid Glide-back Booster (LGBB) vehicle. Within 72 hours, more than 1000 Cart3D and 100 Overflow cases had completed. “We continued running jobs for seven days and completed just over 3000, so we felt that was pretty successful,” adds Rogers.

The trial used 13 different computing resources at four different locations: NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley; NASA Glenn Research Center in Ohio; the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California; and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Illinois.

The AeroDB system includes a series of Perl scripts that interact with IPG software tools. Globusrun launched the jobs, the Grid Common Services broker determined the appropriate execution sites, and user authentication was enabled with grid certificates.