How to ride this wave to get a larger market share? Major CAE software players choose different approaches.  Essentially, they bet on the ecosystem (CAD-CAE-PLM), or bet on disciplines (multi-physics, or multi-discipline, structural-mechanical-CFD-electrical-magnetic).

When the $413 million acquisition of Abaqus by Dassault Systems was announced in May 2005, it marked the new era in CAE industry: compete with an ecosystem. Before the acquisition, only UGS (later acquired by Siemens as Siemens PLM Software in 2007) had its own ecosystem. Apparently, Autodesk is positioned to enter CAE market based on their acquisitions of Algor, Moldflow and CFDesign in recent years.

For a CAD or PLM player, providing CAE solution is a natural expansion. Compared with pure CAE players, they have at least two advantages:

1. Cross-selling. CAD market is far larger (in terms of the number of license, and users) than CAE market, and most new CAE opportunity lies in the CAD adopters.This means CAD vendors have

… Read the rest “Bet on ecosystem or on disciplines?”

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One of the alternatives for CFD simulation is the lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE), where the fluid is treated as fictitious mesoscopic particles (not molecules). If you need something to make you sleepy, please read the short (and concise, and free) book:  A Practical Introduction to the Lattice Boltzmann Method.

But for commercial CFD code, most are based on Navier-Stokes equations, and differ in the numerical method: finite volume, or finite element, or a hybrid of both. Finite difference based CFD is hard to find in commercial codes.

When Exa hit the market with the first commercial LBE based CFD code, PowerFlow, about 15 years ago, not so much buzz was created in CFD market. Actually, the first a few releases got not-so-good reviews, partially due to the marketing and sales issues (over-promising). Of course, apparently, in recent years,  they got a lot of improvements in both solver and marketing. They also got a few big customers in the automotive industry.  But it is still not considered as the mainstream CFD software among CFD practitioners. In the academic circle, there have … Read the rest “Navier-Stokes vs lattice Boltzmann: will it change the landscape of CFD?”

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The two parties involved usually are not balanced: a big shark in the CAE or PLM market and an almost unheard (for the majority of CAE users) name.  For the smaller party, who usually has something special in a niche market, the partnership gives them greater exposure to more potential customers; while for the bigger party, such a partnership can complement their product portfolios so that they can provide a broader solution.

An interesting example is the partnership between ANSYS and LSTC. Before ANSYS acquired Century Dynamics in 2005, they did not have their own explicit solvers, while the major competitors, Abaqus and MSC, both had. So the partnership was critical for ANSYS to provide a full FEA solution. For LSTC, of course, ANSYS becomes one of their major distributors of their LS-DYNA solver. However, such a partnership becomes less important for ANSYS because they now have their own explicit solver (Autodyn).

So, just like any real-world relationships, the partnership is never … Read the rest “Partnership in CAE Industry”

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But how to define a high-quality, or more preciously good, mesh? Reading the output of mesh quality report in your meshing software is only the first step; you need to make judgements whether the mesh is good enough for your physical problem.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of misunderstanding of good mesh. Nowadays, it is hard to find meshing course in engineering departments. The numerical algorithm in most engineering schools is optional. So, it is not surprising, the new generation CAE users lack some fundamental knowledge on how meshing works in a CAE system.

Here are the top 5 misunderstandings on a good mesh.

#1. Good mesh must follow CAD model well.

More and more CAE users are designers, as explained in the previous post. They are generally well trained in CAD, and they tend to bring all details to analysis. They believe more details means more close to the reality.

This is not true, most of the time. Good mesh need resolve physics, … Read the rest “Top 5 misunderstandings on (good) mesh”

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We are frustrated with the numerous CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM/PDM magazines, which have articles similar to marketing materials: lack of depth. Such articles may mislead the CAE professionals, although they provide the updates on the industry.

We are also frustrated with the market research reports produced by some research firms. Unfortunately, a lot of these researchers even  cannot ask a proper question, and therefore cannot present a clear picture of the industry, because they do not have any knowledge on CAE.

So, here comes CAE Watch.

We will give you in-depth analysis on the CAE  industry and share with you the advanced techniques in both FEA and CFD. In addition, you can ask any CAE related questions: FEA, CFD, PLM, HPC, preprocessing, post-processing, meshing, CAD import…, and our experts will try to give you the most relevant and accurate answer.

Not enough?

 … Read the rest “CAEWatch, WTF?”

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Predicting the future of CFD is similar to weather forecasting, maybe just like Mayan’s Apocalypse.

But this does not stop us from expecting a new prediction, just like you check the weather forecast before travel.

As my first degree is meteorology related, please do not expect the prediction is more accurate than weather forecasting for the next 365 days.

#1. Automated meshing:  a classical fairy tale continues

Fairy tales always have listeners, and of course, tellers as well. When you are young, you are listeners; when you are older, you may gradually become a teller.  What has not been changed is the story.

Automated meshing is such a classic fairy tale in CFD industry.

Meshing is always one of the most challenging tasks for most real-world CFD problems (I am not talking about flow over an infinite plate). Automated mesh generation is the dream … Read the rest “CFD in 2013: what will change? what will not”

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All textbooks teach you how important the post-processing is. For most Generation Y engineers, post-processing (and maybe even the whole CAE) almost equal to visualization as discussed in this post.

Yes, post-processing is important: it gives you the chance to justify your one-month (or one-day, or one-week, or one-year) work; it shows you something you want or something unexpected.

If you are lucky, you can even show how your simulation matches the experimental results. If you don’t have any experimental data (unfortunately, nowadays, this is not uncommon any more), you can still justify your results against common sense.

Of course, “right” or “accurate” results are not the goal of simulation.  The purposes of simulation usually  include:

• to get some data or insights that are impossible, or impractical, or too expensive, from experiments or physical tests (so that the process or system or physics can be better understood; for PhD students, more colorful figures in papers and thesis) ;
• to diagnose the problems encountered of a system (or a component) in real-world operation (so that the possible causes or scapegoats can be identified);
• to predicate the performance of a system

… Read the rest “From post-processing and visualization to simulation result exploration”

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Actually, cloud computing is not new for CAE industry, especially for CFD users. 15 or 20 years ago, when you accessed supercomputers in the computing centre from home or office through dial-up modems (do you know what it is?), or ISDN if you are lucky, you were already using “cloud computing”. Now this cloud computing is so popular that every computing event must have a dedicated session for it. If you are not sure, check the coming Supercomputing Carnival 2011 (SC2011) in Seattle in this November or the more geeky one: HPC 2011 in Boston in last April.

Fluent announced the Remote Simulation Facility (RSF) in 2002. This probably is the first commercial CFD cloud computing offer. They upgraded the cluster several times later. The response is, based on community feedback,  very good. This e-business model combining software and computing resources is very attractive for small consulting firms, and moderate users. The $3-$20 (depending on the volume of commitment) per CPU hour is quite reasonable, although not so cheap.

It seems ANSYS is quietly retiring … Read the rest “CAE in the Cloud, Is It Just Hot Air?”

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CAE software is still not a mass product for the time being. The required knowledge and input from the user make it almost impossible to just use fingers. You still need a mouse, for the time being. It is probably impractical to expect dramatic changes in the requirements of the users.

Unarguably, simulation has penetrated into more and more industries. A lot of companies have used it in the very early design stage to shorten the development cycle and to reduce the prototyping costs. Most of them achieved their goals, at least partially. This, therefore, gradually changes the profiles of CAE users.

More and more designers join the of CAE Jihad. Their No.1 demand is ease of use.

In the old days, CAE users were looking for functions, capabilities, accuracy and flexibility. They are willing to learn some strange languages only can be used for specific software, and enjoying to play with the ASCII input files without using any GUIs or UIs.

Ten years ago, if you … Read the rest “Ease of use, why is it important for CAE software?”

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So, it’s time to talk about CFD  in 2014.

Of course, I don’t want to pretend to be an industrial analyst for CFD. I’m not rubbing the crystal ball. Instead, I’m ranting from the perspective of end users, because I think I am part of them.

Branding, not just technology

Technology is abused nowadays.

If you ever watched a shopping channel (maybe just accidentally in a hotel), you may notice “technology” is one of the hot words in the show.  Maybe just for a mop, or an egg mixer, the presenter is always intoxicated by the “technology”  the product has. The “technology” talked may be just small tricks or common-sense.

If you think CFD software industry is an exception, you are probably wrong.

The technology behind  CFD  is not evolved as fast as CFD software releases. But most CFD software vendors need to push incremental update regularly so that the customer can keep spending. 

One … Read the rest “CFD in 2014”

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It seems most CFD software vendors now are aware of the importance of post-processing capabilities. Competition for buyers will be extended from brains to eyeballs. If your CFD software can only draw black and white lines, or can only generate mediocre animations, it seems it will prepare to die, soon.

The trend of getting better visualization and post-processing tools is surely driven by the demands from the customer, although “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

So, if you ask so many called CFDers (CFD engineers, CFD specialist, CFD analysts,  CAE engineers…) why they think visualization is so important. You probably will get all sorts of answers. But probably, the top 3 answers would be:

#1. “My boss can only read colourful things.”

The sad truth is that most of the times the supervisors of the CFDers don’t know CFD (why should they know?). Images … Read the rest “The best 3 answers to “Why is visulization important for CFD?””

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1.  Open source CFD solution is cheap because nothing can be cheaper than free.

2.  Open source CFD solution is inferior, otherwise, why is it free?

Both of them are wrong.

Open source CFD solution is not cheap, although licensing is free

Most open source CFD packages are licensed under GNU General Public License (GPL) or BSD license or MIT license.  Under such licenses, anyone can use the software (including source code) for free. There is no limitation on the usage (it means it can be used in commercial project). The only restriction is on the re-distribution of the software or its derivatives: you must release the source code if you want to sell or re-distribute it.

So, licensing the software has no cost. You can get it from the internet. Of course, you can pay nominal fees to get it on a DVD delivered to your doorstep.

But software is only part of a CFD solution.  Human resources and hardware are also in the equation of cost. In most organizations, these two usually cost more, especially the staff cost.

The argument some may have is … Read the rest “Why isn’t open source CFD solution for everyone?”

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They are Dassault Systèmes, Autodesk, PTC, Siemens (UGS),  Mentor Graphics and ANSYS.

Dassault and Siemens have the complete ecosystem: CAD-CAM-CAE-PLM.  Autodesk and PTC reply more on CAD. Mentor Graphics has a limited presence beyond in the electronics industry. ANSYS is an interesting company focusing only CAE.

Compared with the rank of the previous year (2010), all these 6 companies climbed some potions varying from 1 to 4.  This indicates the demands for CAD/CAE/PLM are getting stronger.  The following table illustrates the ranking of these 6 companies in the last three years.

We will analyze these companies, as well as other CAD/CAE/PLM software companies in other articles.… Read the rest “The Big 6 in CAD/CAE/PLM software industry (2011)”

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