From CAD to mesh generation for analysis, ANSYS ICEM CFD provides sophisticated geometry acquisition, mesh generation, mesh editing, a wide variety of solver outputs and post-processing. ANSYS ICEM CFD is the only Universal pre-processor for analysis including FEA, CFD and other CAE applications such as particle transport and computational electro-magnetics. Used for engineering applications such as computational fluid dynamics and structural analysis, ANSYS ICEM CFD's mesh generation tools offer the capability to parametrically create grids from geometry in multi-block structured, unstructured hexahedral, tetrahedral, hybrid grids consisting of hexahedral, tetrahedral, pyramidal and prismatic cells; and Cartesian grid formats combined with boundary conditions. ANSYS ICEM CFD is the swiss army knife of meshing, our product vision is to provide a variety of flexible tools that can generate "any" type of mesh on "any" type of geometry for "any" solver or "any" application.

Key Features:

• Intuitive built-in geometry creation and highly automated functionality for the modification and repair of imported CAD data.
• Ability to work with both NURBs and faceted geometry types like STL or existing meshes.
• Robust tools for creating all mesh types: hexahedral, tetrahedral, prism, pyramid, quad, tri or bar elements.
• Highly tolerant of imperfect/overdetailed CAD data containing sliver surfaces, gaps, holes and overlaps.
• Smoothing, coarsening, refinement, element type conversion, linear or quadratic element support.
• More than 100 CFD/CAE solver interface formats.
• File based transfer of CFD and structural results for Fluid structure interaction simulations.
• Automated batch processing through an intuitive scripting framework

Now, engineers and analysts have to learn only one software environment to pre-process as well as post-process for the many analysis codes often in use within a work environment.

Direct CAD Interfaces

A key component of the productivity savings from utilizing ICEM CFD is due to the industry unique Direct CAD Interfaces. Presently available for CATIA, CADDS5, ICEM Surf/DDN, I-DEAS, SolidWorks, Solid Edge, Pro/ENGINEER and Unigraphics, ICEM CFD's Direct CAD Interfaces enable the CAD model to be transferred directly into ICEM CFD, without requiring cleanup of third-party formats such as STEP/IGES, ACIS, PARASOLID, DXF, STL etc. Through the Direct CAD Interfaces, boundary conditions and grid size specifications can be applied in the CAD system, and carried all the way through to the solver. Parametric modeling is greatly simplified as this information is preserved with the original CAD model, even throughout design modifications.

We can also read 3rd party CAD such as STEP, IGES, ACIS, Parasolid, DWG/DXF, IDI, and GEMS. Other users take advantage of the ability to import many forms of Faceted data (STL, VRML, etc) and Formatted point clouds. There are also options to import mesh and convert the surface mesh to faceted geometry, including feature capture, etc.

Complete Meshing Suite

ANSYS ICEM CFD's highly automated mesh generation tools cater to virtually all topologies including all hexahedral, all tetrahedral, hybrid hex/tet element meshes, or Cartesian meshes. Additional elements that can be generated include prism and pyramid cells.

Figure: Images courtesy of Aletheon Division of Pratt&Miller, New Hudson, Michigan

ICEM CFD Hexa CAA V5: Hexahedral Volume Meshing within CATIA V5

This application allows the user to create Hexahedral volume meshes within CATIA V5. The ICEM CFD Hexa Topology and mesh parameters are defined with the ICEM CFD toolbar. These meshing specifications and the resulting ICEM CFD Hexa mesh are stored within the CATIA V5 Analysis document. Users can make changes to the original design and the mesh can be regenerated based on the stored mesh set-up data.

Post-Processing

A state of the art post- processing and visualization module, ICEM CFD Visual3, provides the CFD professional with easy-to-use powerful result visualization features for structured, unstructured, and hybrid grids. ICEM CFD Visual3 provides an in depth view of data with visualization tools such as cutting planes, contouring, iso-surfaces, streamlines, line plots, data probes and animation. Features such as a CFD function calculator and an intuitive based user interface make ICEM CFD Visual3 a powerful interpretation tool of computed results. The ANSYS ICEM CFD Visual3 is a flexible and customizable post-processor that interfaces with all the major CFD/CAE solvers.

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