Frustration abounds
We litteraly do not know where to start with your program as the turtorials are extremely vague.
For example, how do you make a simple wind tunnel? Where is the manual, the online version is spartan to say the least. We can't even get simple things to work, following the tutorials raises more questions than answers, the open pipe one for example assumes a certain level of knowledge.
We hope you can help, the program "Looks" great and the examples you show look very impressive, but you give absolutely no clue as to how to achieve these results.
[Edit: based on an email exchange]
Feedback
Questions? Ideas? Problems?
Getting Started Suggestions
Sorry to hear you are having problems.
CFD is a complex discipline, we (Symscape and the CFD industry in general) are not at the point where we can guarantee flow results at the press of a button. For a perspective try "Lessons in Computational Fluid Dynamics".
If would be helpful if you could share what you are trying to model and what results you'd like to extract (e.g., forces).
I'm a COMPLETE novice
You got it in one... I'm a COMPLETE novice.
"Sorry to hear you are having problems."
I wish it was just with your program ;-)
"1) I'm not sure about your CFD or Fluid Mechanics knowledge level, but I assume you are new to both? In which case you might find it useful to review 'Overview: Geometry To Results' and for a more detailed set of classes 'CFD Novice to Expert Reloaded'"
Zip, nada, nothing... I looked at these, I'd still say the same thing though, a small bit vague. I'm 40 in a couple of weeks, so going back to college is out of the question!!
The screen cast were great though, sit back with a nice coffee, pause & rewind, but sometimes we got lost as to WHY a certain tool was used WHEN.
"2) The tutorials, I presume you mean for RANS Flow, are our best effort to convey the functionality that Caedium provides. I'm not convinced a manual would be any help - hands-on learning through tutorials seems to be the most effective means to learn in our experience. Then we provide Forums for specific questions and which also serve as a knowledge base which is easily accessed through our site search."
A little advice, we just wanted to use a simple wind tunnel simulation, but don't know where to start, we know the steps, made the geometry but don't know how to generate the wind flow.
And, I was very interested in the solar panel example, but would like to see some of the "how its done" stuff.
"3) Have you tried our screencasts?"
Good stuff. Would it be possible to do some guides along the lines of these... http://www.formz.com/products/bonzai3d/bonzai3dVideo_320.php?startMovie=... they make it VERY easy to follow the use & more importantly the intent of all of the tools. We've used Form-z for years, but do 90% of our quick modelling in Bonzai these days, the vids saved tonnes of training time and are a great resource.
"4) If you are after a wind-tunnel like tutorial then try the 'Rotating Wheel tutorial'"
I'm looking at it now.
"5) For a wind-tunnel that totally encloses an object, you would subtract the object from the box and follow the process outlined in 4)"
OK, but would you recommend a fully enclosed space or open?
"CFD is a complex discipline, we (Symscape and the CFD industry in general) are not at the point where we can guarantee flow results at the press of a button."
I'm starting to appreciate that now, but the time / expense savings it offers will be worth the pain I hope.
Require Water Tight Flow Volume
One of the fundamental problems most people face is how to represent their geometry for CFD. You have to produce a volume (water tight) that contains the air (space around your geometry) you want to simulate for Caedium RANS Flow. For unbounded external flows this usually entails creating a big box and subtracting your object from it. So for example take the flow around a car, you have to provide a closed volume minus the solid portion of the car. You need an outer boundary that extends far enough away from the car so as not to be influenced by the car - again the wheel tutorial demonstrates this. The wheel tutorial is more or less identical to the solar panel example, if you skip the rotation and moving ground specifications. Note these simulations are exploiting symmetry to reduce the domain size and therefore improve the simulation turnaround time.
Yes the Bonzai videos/presentations look great, can't promise anything that slick in the short term though.
One thing to watch with Bonzai is that it doesn't support STEP export, which is necessary for Caedium RANS Flow simulations. It seems that Form-z does though according to:
http://www.novedge.com/products/2556