There are numerous companies in the world that are building products that have fluid flow and heat transfer design challenges. The status quo is to physically test the designs or use “rules of thumb”. The dangers are tremendous. Unreliable products are getting to market too late and the cost of goods is shooting through the roof.

There are many CFD vendors out there that promise to make all of the above go away.

The fact is in order for CFD to have a significant impact on your business the tool has to maximize the information provided and use the information to make better informed decisions. CFD codes produce a tremendous amount of data. Historically, its taken a CFD samurai to comb through it all and come out with the needle in the haystack.

Upfront CFD is different. It was built from day 1 to help answer the question “what-if”. Imagine if physical prototyping was instant and free. You would tweak and try innovative things to develop much better products, right? That is what upfront CFD is all about- numerous what-if scenarios AND the ability to specify only the information you want and compare the data side by side.

Check out how CFdesign works with Inventor and Fusion.

We are the Industry Preferred Partner for Autodesk Inventor and Revit. Stop by and see us at Autodesk University. I think you will be impressed.

If we look at upfront CFD, it was born with the vision to empower mechanical design teams with flow and thermal simulation tools. It is a methodology to help make the design process more efficient and unleash the power of design exploration. The concept of upfront CFD is to perform a ‘design study’, which is a design exploration of various what-if scenarios in order to explore design alternatives and compare these ideas side by side directly on your desktop. If the design is conceptual, great. If the design, is a re-design, that’s fine. If the design is a retro-fit, that’s ok too. How is this different than traditional CFD?

In the early days, those that were doing CFD, tended to be the large scale aerospace and automotive companies. In simple terms, it was for those that were pushing the forefront of large scale innovative design and needed a better way. They had very costly flow and thermal design challenges that needed to be solved and were close to impossible (size & cost) to solve in a physical prototyping environment. So, for them, their design process needed to be improved. But their process was vastly different from those in the SMB market. The big guys were dealing in a different $$$ bracket and could afford to be early adopters. Unfortunately, the CFD technology, computing power, adoption of 3D and life in computer-aided engineering was in its infancy. The breakthroughs were rapid, but it isolated the community of users that would even consider CFD.

The end result was a fracture between those that design and those that analyze. There are exceptional companies out there, that were able to develop a process where designers and analysts collaborate efficiently. But, in general, these are vastly different worlds. The experience and education is often different as well as the tools and methodologies.

Companies began to step out of this mold and multi-tasking design engineering became more common. Engineers/designers wore hats of all sorts. They were driving CAD, doing the testing, spec-ing materials etc. This community of engineers were the early adopters of upfront CFD. They felt “the pain” of not having the support of an analysis group, they realized physical prototyping was killing the bottom line and they were leaving innovated ideas on the white boards of abandoned brainstorming sessions. The multi-tasking engineering folks had a brand new way of thinking about CFD. Upfront CFD wasn’t simply making traditional CFD easier, it was changing the way engineers viewed and interacted with CFD. It was focused on helping improve the process of design. Allowing engineers to leverage their CAD models and receive design decision making information in minutes and hours rather than days/weeks or not at all.

In the early days, it made sense that multi-tasking engineers gravitated to upfront CFD. But, the reality is that all engineering organizations are different. Some subscribe to the philosophy of multi-tasking, others believe that individual groups is the way to go. The problem is not whether there are separate groups, the issue is about the process in which these groups approach design.

There has to be synergy in the entire process. Design procedures need to be established so that all members of the team can work as efficiently as possible. CAD models need to be modeled in a way that makes simulation a natural part of the process. Whether a CAD designer actually clicks the “solve” button or whether the provide the necessary design “variations” to the analyst. They have to be involved in the process and the education. Everyone needs to be onboard and approach the design process as a team.

Upfront CFD is about helping defining process within a single group, across multiple groups or within an entire organization. Eliminating redundant steps, such as the application of common boundary conditions and material properties is fundamental. Leveraging the rich information from the CAD model should be a rhetorical step. Getting you to the point that you can focus on design decision making should be the goal, not all of the steps to get you there.

CFdesign 2011 has tools in place to allow engineering organizations, to develop standards and best practices and can be deployed across the entire organization and allows sharing of these tools via the web. Sharing of process automation tools such as customized material libraries, design study templates, design study rules and even 3D interactive results can be securely accessed from the CFdesign Customer Portal. Upfront CFD is much more than simple conceptual models. Upfront CFD is an overall design philosophy than allows engineers to get more done in 24 hours than any other method.

The feature I found most interesting, was including a connection to Autodesk Fusion. As many know, its the modeling modeler that is offered for free on the Autodesk Labs site.

What that means to us CFD geeks is a free forming way to optimize my designs and let the simulation results drive my decisions. Check out Luke doing his thing above. Only the first steps with Fusion, stay tuned.

The plan was an annual releases with quarterly updates. And get this, we planned to post the release dates to our user community. Seemed totally logical to me, the product manager. But, needless to say, there was quite an uncomfortable vibe in development and QA. Rightfully so, our product is immensely complex and we are tweaking and adding buckets of new functionality all the time. The pace takes a bit of getting used to. At the same time, we adopted a completely new development environment. Change is always good:)

Interestingly enough, the good people that develop ubuntu follow the same philosophy– they call it a “cadence”. Check out Mark Shuttleworth speaking about it below.

I am proud to announce that we are coming up on releasing our sixth release perfectly on time. The quality and predictability of our software has never been better. It allows us to respond to enhancement requests, fix bugs add new functionality and plan in a very efficient manner. The stress of delivering everyday is immense, but I feel that it’s what holds us all accountable. Not only accountable to the product, but accountable to the community.

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I think my friend, “the cloud”, has gotten a bad rap. It definitely took a ribbing at SolidWorks World 2010, where engineers were trying to make a drinking game out of it all. My sense is that its easy to make fun of something that you either don’t quite understand or that you don’t exactly see the value. I suspect its the latter in most cases.

If you have read anything on The Virtual Engineer, you will know that I am a huge fan boy of the good ole “cloud”. What is my definition of the cloud? In very simple terms it is web-enabled, web-based, web-hosted, web-stored, web-collaborated computing. Common theme here, “the web”. We all use it, many of us depend on it and some of are are even slightly addicted to it.

upfront cfd external flow simulaiton

So, why does using the word cloud cause anxiety? I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time, because I clearly don’t get it. Am I the minority? Not sure. But, it dawned on me the other day that I have felt the pain of “the old way”. If you haven’t, I’m not sure you will appreciate the value. The old way is a collage of bloated hard drives, sorry-ass USB external drives, various copies of files, handfuls of thumb drives full of stuff. I’m tired of being a VPNing, remote desktoping, begging for more horse power, tired of ftp-ing slave to status quo. I want a new way. I want to have access to my files, wherever, from whatever- laptop, netbook, iphone. If I want to share my files, I want to be able to send a link to someone with highly encrypted password protected safety. I want to be able to, at a minimum, preview my files in a browser. How can I be the minority? Doesn’t everyone want this?

But, the above is just the tip of it. I’m a simulation driven, upfront CAE doing, design guy. I am drinking a Big Gulp size of the the Kool-Aid. But, you want to talk about pain. I’m not sure there is a better reason today for engineers to openly embrace the cloud than in the simulation community. But not just the simulation community, the “upfront cfd” simulation community. Why?

1. Design engineers tend to want to try numerous what-if scenarios, resulting in numerous back to back runs that ideally could run around the clock
2. CFD models are getting bigger and bigger and are requiring more and more power
3. Every design engineering department on the planet is trying to reduce cost of hardware, minimize capital investment- so paying for what you need, when you need it is a no-brainer
4. More and more engineers find that they are on the go, out of the office and need access to their data, models, computing power from anywhere

I think we are on the cusp of a major break through in the way we engineer. There are a ton of things that need to be figured out. Security, licensing, bandwidth, hardware etc are simply just the basics that need to be worked out. Exciting to see some of the most talented people in the world working on it.

Unfortunately, they took the “top down” approach. They were both respectively veterans in the CAE space that had “analyst” tools that were successful in their own right, and now they were changing their tune and exposing their technology to the design community. They found themselves in a very difficult place. They were taking what they knew and tried putting it in different terms. So, the end result was making FEA “easy to use” and making structural analysis “possible for design engineers”. But, I bet if you poll engineers and ask them how many are looking for an “easy to use FEA tool” or an FEA tool created for “design engineers”. I suspect, you will get a mixed bag. Let’s face it, most engineers are not looking for an FEA tool or a CFD tool, for that matter.

Engineers and their managers are looking for a tool that allows them to make better design decisions, reduce the number or physical prototypes, provide information whether a design passed or failed based on some failure criteria. Right? Most engineers could care less that its FEA or CFD. They expect and in many cases, demand that its easy to use. They also should not have to deal with status quo. They need tools that help them make decisions.

Where am I going with this? Don’t be fooled when looking to improve your design process. Don’t just get in line and assume that the “traditional analysis” companies or even worse, the MCAD companies, really understand how to help you make better design decisions. Each one of them is focused 100% in what they do. And what they don’t do is upfront CAE.

Traditional FEA/CFD companies are focused on working with analysts. MCAD companies are focused on 3D design. Each has a “solution” for you or so they claim. But, the reality is they are not focused on what you need.

There are very few companies that know and own the “upfront” FEA and CFD markets. Go out there, bang on google, cream rises to the top.

Don’t take my word for it. See for yourself. But, don’t believe the hype. Make sure you are making the right decision.