Tecplot, Inc. Announces First CFD Simulation Analytics Tool

Tecplot® Chorus™ Integrates Metadata Analysis, Post-processing and Simulation Data Management for Accelerated Engineering Decision-making.

BELLEVUE — A new simulation analytics tool being developed by Tecplot, Inc., called Tecplot® Chorus™, will allow engineers to more easily discover trends and anomalies in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies and simultaneously gain insights into the underlying, fluid-dynamic phenomena that cause these variations. By allowing engineers to collaborate in analyzing large sets of simulation data, the tool will help them make more informed decisions faster.

Tecplot Chorus is presently in testing with a select group of key customers and will be available for purchase in the third quarter of this year.

“Just as the invention of the scanning electron microscope allowed scientists to develop a deeper understanding of underlying phenomena driving the variations in macro-properties across many specimens,” says Mike Peery, Tecplot, Inc. president, “Tecplot Chorus will allow engineers to look at their simulation data sets in a completely new way—giving them a ‘microscopic’ view into the underlying physics simultaneously with a ‘macro’ view into the relationships of parameters and outcomes across many cases.”

Tecplot Chorus can easily analyze anywhere from one to thousands of simulation cases simultaneously. It incorporates an easy-to-use simulation data management system for both test and computational data. The new simulation analytics tool also promotes greater collaboration and efficiencies among teams of engineers, allowing them to archive and share simulation data to avoid rework and support teamwork.

True to Tecplot, Inc.’s tradition of providing quality engineering and scientific visualization products that help users be more creative, efficient and productive, Tecplot Chorus integrates analysis and quality assurance processes with flexible features that are designed to manage, analyze and visualize large amounts of metadata, identify trends and anomalies, and link them to the underlying physics. This will result in the more rapid prototyping of design concepts for faster time to market.

For engineers who work with large amounts of simulation data, Tecplot Chorus helps them understand complexities, identify trends, and connect it all to the underlying physics by providing:

A Unified Environment for Enhanced Metadata and Flow Field Analysis — Manage multiple projects, filter, explore, compare, and display differences between plot images to help discover and understand the physics and to detect problems with simulation quality, all from one easy-to-use interface.
Rapid Visualization and Exploration of Surface Data — View 3-D surfaces within a flow field with a single mouse click, including grid-works of actual computational data points on body surfaces, slices through a flow field, boundary surfaces, iso-surfaces and streamlines. Users can filter and compare cases, and calculate differences between solutions or sets of solutions.
Automated Plot and Data Extraction — Quickly extract metadata from complex file and directory structures for fast and easy integration with documentation and presentation tools.
Open Connection to 3D Post Processors — Launch Tecplot 360 and most third-party post-processors within the product for a deeper analysis of the data and stay focused on current projects without switching back and forth between applications.
Surrogate Modeling Tools — Sophisticated analysis tools generate multi-dimensional surrogate models and response surfaces. These surfaces allow them to make interpolations in areas of sparse data within the parametric space, reducing the number of simulations and testing configurations needed to develop optimum designs.
Easy Set-up and Deployment — Tecplot Chorus provides a reliable and stable platform, making it easy for engineers to populate an integrated database with metadata and plot images. The company also offers engineering consulting services to assist with deployment of the product and preconditioning their metadata.

Tecplot Chorus is being developed in close cooperation with a customer advisory council, which has been actively involved in beta testing the product.

“We see cross-team collaboration as key for many of our customers,” said CIMdata executive consultant Ken Amann. “Tecplot Chorus could be one of those breakout technologies that enable broad collaborative CFD scenarios. There are many engineers with varying skill levels conducting CFD research today, and enabling them to collaborate should provide them a significantly higher level of insight and ability to make more informed decisions faster.”