This 90 minute recording of a discussion on CFD-challenges covers a lot of ground and contains several items of interest, not least the prediction that the need for increased resolution and fidelity is quickly going to lead to billion-cell grids. Our highlight for this issue, though, relates to the question cited by a panelist: “we went to the moon without high end computers, why do we need them now?”. Why indeed! Listen to this answer to get one expert’s view.

Tecplot’s Meshgen addon was the recommended way to create the grid needed to contour test data, spreadsheet-calculations, etc. You don’t have to use Meshgen, though: this video shows a Python program that reads a 2D region from a CSV file and uses Gmsh to create the mesh. Contact us if you want to take this further for your own use: the Python program can quite easily be extended to process – for example – DXF files.

The flexibility that Pointwise provides is one of the several reasons it’s the choice for CFD mesh-generation. Since the current implementation of higher-order grid generation in Pointwise elevates linear cells to higher orders on export it’s important to understand the effect of each of the export options on the resulting grid. Watch this video for an introduction to the different export-parameters and their effects on the exported grid.