Autodesk® CFD 2016 contains several new features and functional updates designed to improve the modeling process, simulation fidelity, and the overall user experience. The first change you probably noticed, however, was the new product name. The "Simulation" has been removed, resulting in the name "Autodesk® CFD 2016." This change has been applied to most of the products in the Autodesk® Simulation product line.
Learn about what's new for 2016 in this short video on Autodesk® Simulation TV.
How many times have you imported a model into a simulation package, only to have the mesher fail in meshing the model or create a poor mesh? How many times have you made it through the mesh process only to end up with poor simulation performance or results? Autodesk® has added the Model Assessment Toolkit (MAT) to our CFD product to help you avoid some of these costly inefficiencies.
For more about the Model Assessment Toolkit...Use the new SimStudio add-in as a CAD reader and geometry preparation tool, prior to transferring your model to CFD.
For more about SimStudio...Use the new surface wrap tool to easily generate CFD-quality external meshes without extensive CAD clean-up.
For more about Surface Wrapping...CAD Entity groups are collections of parts or surfaces, and are created in the CAD system using a dialog installed with Autodesk® CFD. They provide a convenient way to automate the assignment of settings and the building of the design study. After launching into Autodesk® CFD, CAD Entity groups are added to the scenario, and appear in the Groups branch of the Design Study bar as Autodesk® CFD groups.
This feature for Autodesk® Inventor has been modified to allow the import of groups from parts and subassemblies into the top level assembly. This makes it easier to re-use groups from such sub-components, especially when they are used in multiple assemblies.
The graphics engine within Autodesk® CFD has been upgraded to provide faster performance. You will see the effects most while navigating large, highly-detailed models. The new graphics engine also updates the appearance of the context tool-bars and legend bars for the Materials and Loads tasks.
In an effort to continuously evolve the solution efficiency of the Autodesk® CFD, a new solver has been developed. For CFD 2016, the solver is available with limited functionality, and is called "CFD2." You can enable the solver by modifying a series of flags and by running a configuration tool included in the CFD 2016 installation folder. Development for CFD2 is planned to continue into future versions of Autodesk® CFD, and is being provided in CFD 2016 as an early preview.
CFD2 is designed specifically for large simulations containing on the order of 30 to 50 million elements. Unlike the original solver, CFD2 enables each process to run on multiple threads as a process/thread hybrid. Further, CFD 2 is designed to optimize cache performance. CFD 2 has shown significant solution time speedup for large models when using multiple compute nodes. The performance for smaller models on a single compute node is comparable to the default CFD solver.
The CFD2 architecture is ideal for systems with large numbers of processors and clusters consisting of multiple compute nodes. It works well with systems that use standard network connectivity. Higher performance connectivity such as Infiniband further improve solution speed, but is not required to realize the benefits of CFD2.
In many AEC applications, solar radiation striking external walls and passing through windows significantly affects occupant comfort and the overall energy efficiency of the structure or space.
AEC Solar Heating in Autodesk® CFD simulates the effect of solar heat passing through windows and walls into the structure. It computes the optical path of incoming solar radiation through windows to compute the heat gain due to sunlight passing into an occupied space. Unlike exterior solar heating, a dome is not required around the structure because the internal surfaces are in contact with the air.
Building upon the increased accuracy for complex flows, two new turbulence models were introduced:
This model is recommended for high curvature flows such as those found in cyclone separators.
This model is recommended for certain airfoils including the NACA0012 and Coanda airfoil as well as small, high speed rotating devices and highly curved flows and flows over convex surfaces.
The Decision Center is the environment for comparing design alternatives. Use it to identify the design that satisfies your design objectives. The Decision Center is a key part of the results visualization process. In CFD 2016 several changes were implemented to simplify its use.
To improve accessibility of the Decision Center, a Decision Center tab was added to the ribbon. Click this tab to open the environment for comparing results from multiple scenarios using Summary Images, Summary Values, and Summary Plots. The new tab replaces the Decision Center commands in the Results tab and the Quick Access toolbar (both of which have been removed from CFD 2016).
By default, all available quantities are now displayed for Summary Parts, Summary Planes, and Summary Points. Additionally, the process of toggling the display of individual quantities has been improved through the addition of the "Display Quantities" dialog. This dialog lists the available quantities, and has commands for showing All and None of the quantities.
Prior to CFD 2016, Summary Part data was only reported for Fluids, Solids, Internal Fans, and Compact Thermal Model (CTM) materials. For CFD 2016, the list of material devices that can be used as Summary Parts has been expanded to include TEC, Heat sink, Heat exchanger, Resistance, and Centrifugal Pump/Blower material devices.
You can now access the Simulation Community from Autodesk® CFD by clicking Community (tab) > Connect (panel) > Simulation Community. The Simulation Community is a platform for connecting with other users of Autodesk® Simulation products. You can view the latest Sim TV videos, share information on the Forums, post interesting results images to the Gallery, and check out the latest Blog entries.
A new set of Learning Paths show how the Autodesk® CFD product help can be used for different experience levels and content needs. Whether you are a new user learning the basics or a seasoned user developing a deeper understanding, you can use these maps to help guide you through the different parts of the Product Help.
The Particle Trace dialog has been modified with improved animation controls. These controls follow the typical "VCR" buttons for Play, Increment, Fast Forward, and Rewind.
To simplify probing for results with the mouse, you can now simply hover over the area of interest to display the current results value in the Status Bar. If Global results mode is active, you can hover over wall surfaces to probe for results on walls. If Planes mode is active, you can hover over results planes to probe for results on planes.
The Filter tool for visualizing 3D results distributions is no longer available. The feature has been removed from the Results context menu and ribbon.
When a pre-CFD 2016 design study file containing a custom PCB material in the "Local" database is opened in CFD 2016, perform the following procedure to ensure the material is correctly applied to the simulation model:
As a result of usability studies, the instructions that describe how to launch the tutorials were redesigned to be simpler and easier to follow. The instructions describing how to launch from CAD, a geometry file, and SimStudio Tools appear in seperate topics for each tutorial.