Pointwise v17.1 Released for CFD Meshing

Pointwise announced the latest release of its Pointwise computational fluid dynamics (CFD) meshing software, which includes a new advancing front algorithm for unstructured surface mesh generation and improvement in file reading and writing that yield up to a hundred-fold speedup, the company says.

The advancing front algorithm complements Pointwise's existing Delaunay-based method and offers users a choice for surface meshing, with the advancing front algorithm generating a more ordered arrangement of triangles than the Delaunay.

"These improvements aren't just aesthetic," said John Steinbrenner, Pointwise's vice president of research and development. "Calculations we've done indicate that the advancing front algorithm generates cells of overall higher quality."

A second improvement is an up-to 100 times speedup in read and write times for the Pointwise native project (PW) file. This speedup was achieved by dropping HDF5 in favor of a proprietary scheme. Also included in Pointwise Version 17.1 are expanded options for editing mesh topology, more tools for distributing mesh points along curves, additional interfaces to CFD solvers, and a variety of user experience improvements.

The On Database Entities command for creating connectors has been extended to work directly with Database Boundaries (the minimum and maximum iso-parametric lines of an untrimmed surface, as well as trimmed surface and quilt boundaries). The Edit menu's Add Faces command has been extended to also provide removal of faces from an unstructured block. The command is now called Add/Remove Faces.

Adding and removing edges to unstructured domains has been added to the Edit menu, and the Distribute command now provides the ability to probe the grid spacing values at individual grid points.

For more information, visit Pointwise.

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