Some of the mechanical engineers have access to MCAD tools. It is a natural progression for these guys to leverage their existing geometric models and use an upfront tool for flow and thermal simulation. It allows for a nice compact environment where you can do parametric digital design studies right on the desktop. We, at CFdesign, have been helping companies solve their flow and thermal challenges for over 16 years in this space.

But there are a fair number of mechanical engineers and the majority of thermal engineers that do not drive MCAD tools everyday and rely on the mechanical designers for that part of the process. This group tends to gravitate to analyst type tools simply because up until recently, that was the only option. There is an unfortunate disconnect between the design guys and the thermal folks. There needs to be a bridge between the two extremes.

We have been seeing a fair amount of “gopher popping”. A silly term for engineers popping their heads up and looking around to see what’s out there. Times are tough and money is tight. They have been spending a tremendous amount of money on these analyst type tools. Many of these tools have gone through major acquisitions lately and they aren’t getting any cheaper.

A simple solution would be to engage with your mechanical group and leverage the models that already exist. But the simple fact is that you still want a fast intuitive modeler to put together some basic layouts, have the ability to read in ECAD data and often times chop away the excess of the MCAD model so that you can strip out only what you need.