An earlier update addressed the use of sockets to allow Python programs to communicate with other applications. This is the same approach used by both Pointwise and Tecplot: view this brief video for getting setup with Pointwise, and this one for Tecplot. For more details, view this and this.

But what is a ‘watchdog’? That’s the question posed – and explained nicely – here. This can be useful if you want to use Tecplot to monitor your residual plots even while the solver logs its calculations to a file. There are lots of ways in which you can write a watchdog, but since one of the benefits of Python is the wide array of available tools, why not just use this one?

Arguably one of the most important concepts within Pointwise, the Size Field is a visual representation of target cell edge lengths which can be influenced by domains and local sources. Together with the size-field gradient, this is a key part of understanding your unstructured / hybrid grid even before initialising it. These videos on the size field, the calculation method and the blended method are must-view since the size field is also an essential concept to understand for the effective use of sources – and sources are a wonderful way to drive grid adaptation.