Tips & Tricks

CFD-VIEW Colormap Options: Static, Dynamic, and Cumulative

The Colormap Settings panel in CFD-VIEW assigns colors to data sets. Identical data values on an object are displayed with the same color if they are using the same colormap display. Three options offer the user the opportunity to select the mode for updating the colormap as the underlying data changes, for example during transient simulations. These options are: Static, Dynamic, and Cumulative

Using Region sources in CFD-VisCART

In order to control grid spacing at user-defined locations, mesh sources are a common tool in CFD-VisCART (Figure 1). Point, Line, Curve, Plane, Box and Surface sources have been available for several years. Cylinder and Sphere sources were introduced a few years back. To extend this tool set further, CFD-VisCART V2013.0 introduced Region sources.

Importing an arbitrary STL surface for post-processing in CFD VIEW

When using the Arbitrary-Cut operator, you have the option to directly import an external surface in STL format into the model. This option, which was first made available in V2013.4, underwent significant performance improvements in V2014.0. This option provides the ability to plot data and process information on any arbitrarily shaped surface. The import process involves reading the STL file and computing the intersections between this surface and the model’s volume cells. Results on the imported surface are interpolated from the intersected volume cells and are independent of the surface mesh size of the STL as long as the surface is properly represented.

Automatic covering of larger unwanted holes in CFD-VisCART

CFD-VisCART meshing automatically closes or covers holes in the geometry that are smaller in size than the cell size specified at the surfaces. To cover LARGER holes, the ‘Max Hole Size to Cover’ feature can be used. This feature, introduced in V2013.2, works to automatically cover larger holes in the geometry during mesh generation, and thus prevents the mesh from leaking into unwanted regions. This feature is available with all mesh types supported in CFD-VisCART.

Grouping option for CFD-VIEW Data Import

Grouping feature in CFD-ACE+ GUI and CFD-VIEW comes in handy when working with complex industrial models. This feature allows putting BC patches or VC entities into a group that can be manipulated easily, to either set up properties or display specific post-processing attributes.

CFD-VIEW Scripting is easier than ever with Journaling

In addition to the numerous options and tools available via the CFD-VIEW user interface, the scripting capability of CFD-VIEW allows you to perform complex data processing on your simulation results, and gives you the option to run the post-processing phase of your simulation in batch mode.

Grouping parts during data import in CFD-VisCART

When dealing with complex industrial models such as cars and airplanes, hundreds of parts need to be managed. Each one of these parts may also be subdivided into different components. In order to easily manipulate these different parts and components in CFD-VisCART, you can make use of the grouping feature.

CFD-VisCART: Mesh Extrusion

In most CFD simulations, it is required to place inlets/outlets far enough from the region of interest in order to reduce their influence on the solution. In many applications, this can be done by extruding existing inlets/outlets BC patches away from the domain.

Preserving boundaries between patches with CFD-VisCART’s Single Domain mesher

The ‘Preserve Features’ option does very well in preserving features between geometry patches – as long as the patches are not coplanar (dihedral angle = 0) or include a very small dihedral angle between them.

CFD-VisCART: Suppression of parts for mesh generation

When performing an analysis comparing component A versus component B, it is useful to have both components stored in the same file for physical comparison and documentation purposes. However, when generating the mesh for the analysis, only one of the parts should be considered at a time. The "Suppress" option in CFD-VisCART makes this possible.