Author Archives: Simon Pereira

About Simon Pereira

Simon Pereira is a Product manager for the ANSYS ICEM CFD and ANSYS DesignXplorer products. He has been at ANSYS for more than 11 years. His pre-ANSYS background includes an Aerospace Engineering degree from Ryerson University in Toronto. He worked as an aircraft designer for Bombardier in Toronto, but was lured to Ford Motor Company as the lead aerodynamicist for several vehicle programs. He has a masters in Mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan.

“Bring Your Child to Work Day” at ANSYS

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This year, my two sons David (8) and Michael (7) had the day off school on the same day as our “Bring Your Child to Work Day” at ANSYS so I brought them in to the Ann Arbor office for the morning. As it turned out, I was the only one to bring in any kids that day — although there were organized events at the larger offices — so I decided I would just let them play with our software in the training room.

Neither boy had used SpaceClaim or ANSYS Mechanical before so I started by giving them some step-by-step guidance, but I rarely touched the mouse after the first 5 minutes. They each used their imagination and made multiple models. David’s first model started looking like a top hat, so he tried to make something reasonably reminiscent of the head of Uncle Sam.

His second model was more of an abstract solid that used a lot of push/pull fillets, which are easy to create and adjust in SpaceClaim. It looked very interesting under load. He was creating the fillets one at a time at first, but then really got going when I showed him how to hold down CTRL for multiple edge select. Continue reading →

New HPC Parametric Packs in ANSYS 14.5 – Tutorial

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Simultaneous solve of design points reduces the time required for a parametric study, and the new ANSYS HPC Parametric Packs make that process very affordable.

As the product manager for ANSYS DesignXplorer, I am always interested in software-related improvements that can help ANSYS customers get more parametric analysis done with less time. For over a decade, the vision of ANSYS has been Simulation-Driven Product Development, which we call SDPD. Our solver technology is world class on its own, but we want our customers to get even more out of simulation. Instead of just using it forensically to see what went wrong, we designed our tools so product R&D teams can use simulation to drive product development. Continue reading →

ANSYS ICEM CFD Interactive

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image of ICEM CFD batch controls in ANSYS Meshing

ICEM CFD interactive/batch controls can be found in the advanced options of several different methods in ANSYS Meshing.

ANSYS Meshing is the general purpose meshing tool found in the ANSYS Workbench environment. It includes a lot of powerful ICEM and TGrid meshing technology, but exposed in a simplified and automated way. For instance, MultiZone in ANSYS Meshing is based on ICEM CFD hexa technology, but without the learning curve associated with blocking, edge distributions, etc.

However, there are some occasions when advanced users want to take more direct and interactive control over their meshing. ANSYS Meshing allows advanced users to “pop the hood” on some mesh methods with the “ICEM CFD Interactive” options (TGrid interactive is also available as a Beta option). ICEM CFD interactive allows users to launch ICEM CFD with all its controls. You can do full hexa blocking, tetra/prism, shell meshing, diagnostics, automatic or interactive mesh editing, etc. You can start from just the geometry, transferred to ICEM CFD with meshing parameters, or you can actually start with the mesh and adjust it from there. For instance, you could generate an PI tetra mesh in ANSYS Meshing using “Interactive” with “Post Operation” and then use the extended ICEM CFD tools to replace the mesh with a smooth delaunay fill or 12 Tetra to 1 Hexa conversion, smooth, and then return to ANSYS Meshing. Continue reading →