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By André Bakker and Scott Gilmore, Fluent Inc.
View the pdf of this article
Guests are invited to
the host’s session
Guests connect to
the host’s session
Now that CFD is making it into the mainstream
of engineering design, many organizations
have a need for tools that go beyond the stand-alone
software approach that has characterized the
CFD industry for so many years. An efficient data
exchange system is crucial to the success of teams
that include CAD engineers, designers, analysts,
and researchers. Not only does the CFD software
have to be able to exchange files with other CAD,
meshing, and CAE analysis packages, it should also
enable communication between the different team members.
To meet this important need, FloWizard will be the
first CFD software on the market that includes collaboration
as a standard feature.
Collaboration allows two or more people on a network
to share in a FloWizard session. Thus, people in
different locations can work together to review a CFD
model at the same time. Collaboration is useful for design
review meetings, and other team cooperation and support
functions.
To enable a collaborative session, a “host” user, or
owner, starts FloWizard and enables collaboration from
the FloWizard menu. He can then invite “guest” users
to his session. FloWizard generates a unique session ID
and password, and these are e-mailed to the invited guests.
When the invited guests start FloWizard and supply the
session ID and password, they are connected to the host’s
FloWizard session.
For collaboration, there are two main approaches, both
of which can be used with FloWizard. The first one is referred to as WYSIWIS (What You See Is What I See). Whatever
is shown on the host’s desktop is broadcast to all guests.
The host can also cede some control of his computer to
others. The WYSIWIS approach is quite generic, and application
independent. However, because broadcasting is
data intensive, it is not suited for applications that involve
large models, complex 3-D graphics, moving objects, or
animations. Rather, it is most commonly used for simple
applications such as online slide presentations or reviewing
meeting notes, for example. Third party software is
required for this type of collaboration.
The other approach is to create a “state level” mode
of collaboration between users. This approach uses tools
that are built-in to the standard release of FloWizard. With
this approach, whenever the state of the model is changed,
an updated set of data is broadcast to all guests. All local
interactivity (rotate, zoom, pan) with the model happens
on the users’ machines independently. This approach
offers a much higher level of interactive response
for models with large data sets, while retaining
the benefits of synchronization. It is, therefore,
much more useful for data intensive workflow
processes, such as CFD model reviews.
With FloWizard, not only is CFD modeling itself
much easier, but the whole design process is streamlined
from start to finish. The new collaboration feature,
in particular, will help the successes and efficiencies
of product design teams.
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