Once the wizard is complete, additional setup including boundary condition specification, meshing, simulation and post-processing are completed from within the main graphical user interface and workflow is generally from top-to-bottom in the panel on the left. If an “external” flow is selected, a subsequent step will advise the user to select the size of the external flow domain. Making that tab active uncovers a “Wizard” button at the top of the toolbar that guides the user through selection of physics to be modeled, for example, choosing between an incompressible or compressible fluid simulation. Once the Flow Simulation add-in is enabled within SolidWorks, an additional “Flow Simulation” tab is available in the SolidWorks Part Tree. SolidWorks seems focused on marketing this as a solution to “designers” working in industrial equipment and electronics, i.e., those without credentials or prior experience in fluid dynamics, numerical analysis or CFD. Fluid volumes extracted for CFD analysis and boundary conditions needed for CFD simulation are linked directly to the native 3D CAD geometry surfaces eliminating the necessity of redefining model setups when experimenting with simple CAD geometry changes. Defining a CFD simulation from within the SolidWorks interface creates additional menu items but does not launch a stand-alone application.
SolidWorks Flow Simulation may be considered the most “CAD embedded” CFD program in this class. Other CAD-linked or CAD-integrated options not discussed here include Rhino CFD, Orca3D Marine CFD, any of the various FloEFD CAD plu gins. Discovery Live has created quite a stir in the CFD community and so we’ll be spending a bit of time on it separating fact from fiction. The newcomer to the category is ANSYS with its Discovery Li ve and AIM products integrated with its SpaceClaim 3D modeling platform. Autodesk has also recently announced that Fusion 360 will communicate directly with Autodesk CFD 2 019. The online CAD platform Onshape promotes export of native files to the SimScale “cloud CFD” platform.
#Solidworks flow simulation mesh refinement software#
Other CAD programs have partially integrated the capabilities of standalone software using plugins. We’ll be looking in detail at the two leaders in this market segment, SolidWorks / Flow Simulation from Dassault Systèmes and Inventor / Autodesk CFD from Autodesk, as well as a relative newcomer in Discovery Li ve. One particularly beneficial aspect of CAD embedded or CAD-linked CFD that should be noted is its potential for enabling and streamlining parametric studies. Never-minding that CAD integration is not the utopia that software marketeers make it out to be, these tools have been adopted by thousands of users and are popular with companies developing fluid-related products on modest budgets. Claims that CAD integration provides a significant advantage to any of these well-known challenges are mostly false. From our vantage point, a direct CAD interface with CFD in and of itself does not provide any new or improved solutions to the biggest challenges of CFD simulation, i.e., geometry simplification and cleanup, extracting the fluid region from what is typically a 3D model of the solids involved, ensuring simulation accuracy through high-quality meshing, and CFD process quality controls. While pushing simulation forward in the design cycle is a noble concept that has the potential to reduce costly engineering change orders, getting there is not as simple as making CFD analysis available to designers within the 3D CAD interfaces they are familiar with. Overhyped, but a Good Value in the Right Situation
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