Tips & Tricks

Local cell size control option in CFD-VisCART

It is often necessary to refine or coarsen the mesh in some regions of your model, whether it be to allow the solver to correctly capture gradients of variables (refinement), or reduce the mesh density in some areas to lower the total cell count. In CFD-VisCART, there are many options that enable local mesh refinement.

Using the BC/VC Queries tool in CFD-GEOM

Have you ever whished that you could blank/unblank or pick/unpick only interfaces in a CFD-GEOM model? You can now with the BC/VC Queries tool. This tool allows you to pick, unpick, blank or unblank all the interfaces of the current model based on the interface type (Fluid/Fluid, Fluid/Solid, etc.).

Surface mesh coarsening option for Shrink-Wrapped meshes

When generating a shrink-wrapped surface mesh, one could end up with a large number of faces (triangles) in an attempt to capture small features. The Mesh Decimation tool in CFD-VisCART allows the user to reduce the number of faces without losing features preserved during the skrink-wrapping process.

How to create Pyramid cells on structured-unstructured domain interfaces in CFD-GEOM

CFD-GEOM can be used to construct a variety of cell shapes: quadrilaterals (2D) and hexahedrals (3D) for structured meshes; triangles (2D) as well as tetrahedrals and polyhedral/honeycomb (3D) for unstructured meshes; prisms and pyramids (3D) for semi-structured meshes.

New Exposed Boundaries Visualization tool in CFD-GEOM

One of the various new features introduced in CFD-GEOM V2009.2 is the ‘Exposed Boundaries’ visualization tool. This tool allows users to quickly visualize those areas where closure problems remain in an otherwise closed and “watertight” model.

Repairing Imported CAD Geometries in CFD-GEOM

In most cases, importing CAD files in CFD-GEOM results in a clean geometry that can be directly used for further processing and/or meshing. However, for complex models, it is possible that the imported geometry has missing, untrimmed or defective surfaces that need to be manually repaired.

Cell Size Growth Control in CFD-VisCART

In CFD-VisCART, the Cartesian cells can split or grow by a minimum factor of 2 because of the intrinsic cartesian-cell-splitting algorithm. Due to this, in some cases, there is a chance that the mesh could grow from dense (at the wall) to coarse (away from the wall) within a short distance.

Butterfly Faces Meshing Tool in CFD-GEOM

In CFD-GEOM, a convenient meshing tool called "Butterfly Faces" allows the user to quickly and automatically create a structured mesh for circular topologies. The resulting mesh consists of 5 structured faces (4 sides and 1 core) inside a circle. Parameters are available to set the size of the core and the mesh density.

Exporting STL Files From CFD-GEOM

A CFD simulation process starts from an accurate representation of the boundaries that usually originates directly from CAD systems. STL and IGES are two of the most common output formats used as a starting point for mesh generation. STL (StereoLithography) files represent 3D surface geometries using a triangular mesh allowing unambiguous transfer of files from one system to another.

Wireframe Display in CFD-VisCART

Rotation, zoom, pan and other graphical operations require re-drawing of the model in the new position within the graphics window. When dealing with large models, these operations can slow down considerably due to the huge amount of graphical data that needs to be processed and re-drawn.