| By Kiran Kumar, Director of Support, Fluent Inc.
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The USC home page
The Fluent User Services Center (USC, www.fluentusers.com) is a convenient
gateway to a host of product and support resources that can
help make the most out of your Fluent software simulations. It provides
24/7 access to the latest software releases, and all the information
needed to ensure success when solving engineering problems. In this article,
some tips on finding and using the many resources on the USC are
presented. To access the site, you can register online at www.fluent.com/support/fuscreg.htm.
Product downloads and information
The latest releases of Fluent software products can be downloaded from
the site as long as your current license contract entitles you to software upgrades.
You can access the software download center either on the home page (under
Services) or from each of the product pages under the Product Information
section. An installation guide as well as answers to frequently asked installation
questions are available from the software download center.
To learn what is new about a particular software release, review the
Release Information on the appropriate product page. Release notes, feature
specifications, and lists of fixed and known defects will help bring you
up to speed on the new version. Details on how to use the new and existing
features are provided in the User’s Guide, Tutorial Guide, and other manuals
that are available under Documentation on the product pages.
Additional application- and feature-specific tutorials and examples are
also available to help you apply the new or enhanced models to your engineering
problems.
In addition to the lists of fixed and known defects, a searchable database
of defects is available on each product page under Defects/Workarounds.
Here, you can search for defect reports that may be related to a problem
you have encountered. The defect reports will also tell you the software
version in which the defect has been fixed – or will be fixed – and any known
workarounds.
The CFD Learning Center home page
Training resources
Training is essential for keeping up with, and learning to effectively use
the ever-expanding capabilities of the software. The USC provides a wide
variety of training resources under Training@LearningCFD.com on the home
page. Whether you are a new user or an experienced one, you will find
many useful training materials here. These materials include presentations
or lectures, hands-on tutorials, as well as archived live presentations that
contain slide shows with embedded audio of the speaker’s voice. These materials
have been organized by product and course level to help you find the
most appropriate materials. Simply select the product, course level, and
type of material from the drop-down lists on the CFD Learning Center page
to access the available options.
The Online Technical Support portal home page
Support resources
From time to time, you may have questions or run into problems that
need to be resolved. In addition to the Documentation and Defects/Workarounds
resources described earlier, the USC has other support resources that can
be very valuable in helping you obtain timely answers to your questions.
Frequently Asked Questions – This link, present on the home page,
will take you to a collection of answers to frequently asked installation,
usage (“how to”), and troubleshooting questions.
Online Technical Support – This portal enables you to a) access our
knowledge base of solutions on various topics and b) request support
from your local Fluent support team and monitor the status of your support
requests. The portal communicates in real time with a support database
that contains solutions to product issues and answers to various
“how to” questions contributed by our worldwide technical staff. Use
the Search Solutions page on this site to access the wealth of technical
information available. When you request support by creating a Case, it
is automatically forwarded to your local Fluent support team. You will
then be notified via e-mail when your case is updated. You can further
communicate with the support staff by adding notes to your Case, and
you can close it if it is resolved to your satisfaction. Detailed instructions
on using this portal are available in a Quick Reference Guide on the home
page of the portal.
Discussion Forums – these are user community forums where you can
discuss topics of mutual interest, and exchange information with other
Fluent software users around the world. Be sure to take advantage of
the wealth of experience contained in this extensive user community.
The CFDLit home page
More services and resources
While solving your CFD problem, you may also need access to technical
papers in your area of interest, published by experts in the CFD and
general fluid mechanics community. A new Online CFD Literature Database
(CFDLit) is available on the USC under the Resources section of the home
page. CFDLit is a unique collection of technical literature relevant to computational
fluid dynamics, created by Fluent engineers. It consists of papers
published in academic and industry trade journals, conference proceedings,
and book chapters that are useful in the development and support of Fluent
products. The database is offered for reference and research as a service to
Fluent customers. You may search and view the authors, titles, and abstracts
of any of the papers in the database and request copies.
More services such as the Fluent Remote Simulation Facility (RSF) and
eLicense (Realtime On-Line Licensing System, or ROLLS) are available are
available under the Services section of the home page. The RSF provides
you with “surge” compute capacity by enabling you to run FLUENT
calculations on a large computer cluster located at Fluent via a secure internet
connection. The ROLLS service is a new online overdraft licensing
system that allows existing Fluent software customers to acquire “surge”
license capacity in the form of short term extra licenses to cover peak
demands.
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