Pointwise Celebrates 15th Anniversary

FORT WORTH, TX - Pointwise, Inc., a provider of mesh generation software and services for computational fluid dynamics (CFD), celebrated its 15th year on Nov. 11.

"Today we marked a significant milestone," said John Chawner, Pointwise's president. "Fifteen years ago we dedicated ourselves to solving the top problem facing CFD engineers - mesh generation. We have been very fortunate to have grown consistently through the years and to have assembled an extremely talented and professional staff. However, it's only when we look at what our thousands of customers have accomplished that our achievement becomes clear."

Pointwise began in 1994 with the Gridgen® software, which remains the company's cornerstone product.

"Looking back, it's hard to recognize the original version of the product," said Dr. John Steinbrenner, Pointwise's vice president for research and development. "New developments in today's Gridgen focus on automated generation of large hybrid meshes including resolution of viscous boundary layers with our T-RexTM technique. Also, recent sponsored research has resulted in new capabilities to be released in 2010. Because it's a mainstay of the aerospace industry, we remain dedicated to continued development of Gridgen in the years to come."

In 2007, the company's next-generation Pointwise® software was first released. Based on lessons learned in the previous 23 years of Gridgen development, the new Pointwise architecture provides both an improved user experience and a framework for the next 15 years and beyond. "Generating grids is an ugly business and customers had been telling us that improvements were needed to the workflow and user interaction. Pointwise is a direct result of that user feedback," said Chawner. "In addition, Pointwise was our opportunity to address customers' requirements such as large mesh support (64-bit), undo and redo, multi-core computing, and software customization."

"We have worked hard for the last 15 years to make our software the best it can be and I am gratified by the loyalty of our customers and the way they have participated in helping us achieve our standards for excellence," said Dr. Richard Matus, vice president of sales and marketing. "The relationships we have built with these highly capable people have helped us produce products and services that meet the demands of an exacting industry. We recognize that and appreciate their insight and experience, especially those who have been using our software since the beginning."

"Since first licensing Gridgen 15 years ago, we have used the software continuously on a wide variety of fixed wing and rotary wing projects while simultaneously increasing the sophistication of the viscous CFD methods Gridgen underpins," said Dwight Doty, AeroSciences Manager for L-3 Communications Platform Integration in Waco, TX.

"We view the growth of Pointwise's products and their support as a key ingredient to the successes we have enjoyed in our business. The development and growth of the Gridgen product over the years definitely saved us man-hours and provided capabilities that are essential to the continued growth of our business," said Doty.

"The folks at Pointwise have really made a difference in the usefulness of their products by helping us solve difficult problems on our schedule. We look forward to continuing this partnership."

The Gridgen and Pointwise software generate structured, unstructured and hybrid meshes; interface with CFD solvers, such as ANSYS® FLUENT®, STAR-CD®, ANSYS CFX® and OpenFOAM® as well as many neutral formats, such as CGNS; runs on Windows® (Intel® and AMD®), Linux® (Intel and AMD), Mac® and Unix®, and has scripting languages that can automate CFD meshing. Large manufacturing firms and research organizations worldwide rely on Pointwise as their complete CFD preprocessing solution.