MSC gets into CFD – in a big way

I’m on the road –so this needs to be brief– but you need to know that MSC announced today that it has entered into a strategic agreement with Next Limit Technologies (you likely know of their Maxwell Render product for visualization and effects) to market, sell, and support the XFlow CFD product worldwide.

I met with the XFlow team and MSC representatives this morning and was impressed by the demos I saw: XFlow is fast, visual (as is to be expected, given the Next Limit parent) and simple to use. Of course, as with all CAE products, more complex scenarios take more time to set up and execute, but what I saw demoed on a commercial-grade laptop was impressive. Set-up was quick, results benchmarks showed very credible accuracy and rapid solution times, and the results visualizations … well, “gorgeous” comes to mind.

XFlow is new to the market, with first customer ship occurring on a very limited basis earlier this year. XFlow has a number of differentiating features: it’s particle-based, fully Lagrangian, meshless and has near-linear scalable performance (according to Next Limit). Is it ready to replace any of the long-standing products in the marketplace? Probably not yet, but according to the developers, it can solve some problems other solutions currently cannot (because of solver technology or memory/processor requirements), produces comparable results more quickly for many problems and, as both Next Limit and MSC admit, requires further work in other areas. Today it could be a solid adjunct to an existing CFD installation, with many applications early in the design process since its speed and quick setup would make it ideal for an iterative process.

David Holman, head of XFlow Technology at Next Limit, told me that XFlow already has customers in automotive, electronics and industrial manufacturing and that he sees MSC as key to getting the product into broader distribution. Ken Welch, MSC’s VP of Strategy and Product Management, said that MSC is ramping up its CFD capability, training staff and getting ready to be the single point of customer contact for XFlow. He expects a roll-out over the next 3 to 4 months, adding capacity as the global introduction proceeds.

Perhaps most interesting is the future vision, and the reason this makes so much sense for MSC. Imagine Adams + XFlow. As a plane’s landing gear comes down, we will soon be able to model the air flows around the structure as well as the forces of the air on the structure. Pretty cool.

There are a number of XFlow videos on Youtube and on MSC’s website. Definitely worth checking out.

Could have used that landing gear XFlow/Adams co-simulation earlier today … I’ll have more on the implications for the market in a couple of days.