Pointwise Debuts Intelligent Automatic Surface Meshing

The latest release of Pointwise’s computational fluid dynamics (CFD) mesh generation software includes automatic surface meshing, the first component of a planned suite of automation features called Flashpoint.

“A suitable mesh is just a stepping stone to a CFD flowfield solution,” says John Chawner, Pointwise’s president. “Too often, that stepping stone is a speed bump because of the effort required to generate a suitable mesh on a realistic geometry model. The new Flashpoint surface meshing combines automation with the control for which the Pointwise software is known.” Pointwise’s new Automatic Surface Meshing capability takes as input a geometry model and a handful of user-defined goals for the mesh and automatically generates a geometry resolving, hybrid unstructured mesh with anisotropy.

“The capability of automatic surface mesh generation, the first in a suite of tools called Flashpoint and introduced in Pointwise V18.4, simplifies the most time-consuming preprocessing procedure,” says Flexcompute’s Dr. Feilin Jia who participated in Flashpoint’s beta testing. “It is like a meshing expert, allowing users to concentrate more on their CFD solutions.”

"The new Flashpoint feature in Pointwise very significantly reduces the amount of effort needed to create a quality surface mesh on very complicated geometries," says Beta tester Jeremy Shipman from CRAFT Tech. "This is a huge time saver—from several days to several minutes—without sacrificing the bottom-up complete control the user has on the final surface mesh."

"Flashpoint is a game changer for meshing. Pointwise has managed to offer the automation of top-down meshing while maintaining its powerful suite of bottom-up capabilities,” says Dr. Chris Sideroff, principal director at Applied CCM. “The best-in-class high quality meshing Pointwise has always been known for is now achievable in minutes."

Customers can immediately download Pointwise V18.4 here.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.