Customize Pointwise for Your Solver Using CAE Plug-in

FORT WORTH, TX – The latest release of Pointwise’s mesh generation software for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) meshing features CAE plug-in, an API for customizing the product to export mesh and boundary condition data for a CFD solver or other CAE software file format.

“Even though Pointwise supports a broad variety of standard, de facto standard, and proprietary file formats to which grids can be exported, there’s always one more we haven’t yet implemented,” said Patrick Baker, Pointwise’s manager of product development. “With the CAE plug-in interface, Pointwise’s customers can implement their own custom exporter and have it working within hours.”

“I am quite pleased to have a native AcuSolve plug-in in Pointwise, allowing our joint users to seamlessly go from Pointwise meshes to AcuSolve flow solutions,” said Dr. Farzin Shakib, CEO of ACUSIM Software. “This is a part of ACUSIM’s strategy and commitment to provide more and more interoperable tools between AcuSolve and other prominent third party packages used in CFD.”

“An open source CFD code such as OpenFOAM® can be accepted in industrial CFD only in conjunction with the best-in-class mesh generation tools. It has been a true pleasure to work with the Pointwise team to create a direct mesh export using the plug-in architecture of Pointwise V16,” said Prof. Hvroje Jasak of Wikki Ltd., a coauthor of Open FOAM, a C++ library and software suite for numerical simulation in continuum mechanics.

“Two lessons have been learned. First, a direct mesh export from Pointwise into polyhedral OpenFOAM mesh classes works smoothly and gives a performance advantage over indirect mesh export routes, e.g. using Fluent mesh format and importing it into OpenFOAM. Secondly, the plug-in in Pointwise V16 architecture provides complete access to mesh data and is easily integrated without reference to native OpenFOAM data structures or internal Pointwise data layout.”

The new release of Pointwise, Version 16.03, also includes support for solid modeling, the 3D mouse, and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows.

Pointwise, Inc. is solving the top problem facing engineering analysts today – mesh generation for computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The company’s Gridgen and Pointwise software generates structured, unstructured and hybrid meshes; interfaces 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.