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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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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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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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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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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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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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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