Large-Scale CFD Post-Processing Gains Significantly Faster Parallel Performance, New Advanced Visualization Tools with Intelligent Light’s FieldView 12.1 Release

Simulation tasks reduced from hours to minutes, even with large, unsteady datasets

FieldView version 12.1 is the fastest version of FieldView ever delivered bringing substantial post-processing performance improvements for multi-core workstations and parallel servers. The performance is complimented by major additions to the renowned FieldView presentation capabilities. The latest release of FieldView brings many new tools to help CFD practitioners improve their capability, productivity, and impact. “FieldView version 12.1 delivers entirely new levels of parallel performance and allows more information to be clearly communicated using the newly added features for controlling lighting, rendering, and color composition for maximum visual impact,” said FieldView product manager Matthew N. Godo, Ph.D. “We’ve been working with our customers and partners for several years to bring tools to users that address the emerging challenges of large volumes of data for complex and often transient simulations and to recognize the need to improve productivity when extracting insight when delivering results to their constituents. FieldView 12.1 is already being embraced by our customers for the parallel performance productivity gains and the ease with which the functionality fits into existing workflows.”

The high-performance parallel capabilities of FieldView 12.1 mean drastic reductions in the time required to read-in parallel data and run simulations. According to Steve M. Legensky, Intelligent Light general manager, “The large-data performance advancements in FieldView 12.1 are tremendous. In one case, the improvements in this release reduced what had been a four-hour task to under 15 seconds on the same hardware. That kind of performance will clearly help our customers improve productivity and increase the return on their investment in CFD post-processing with FieldView.”

Speed, performance benefit large-data users Customers around the world and across industries are already putting FieldView 12.1 to the test. In Europe, one aerospace customer reports routinely handling 50 million element models on multi-core laptops running 64-bit Windows® systems. Two of Intelligent Light’s Formula 1 team customers are using FieldView 12.1 to solve problems that exceed 120 million tetrahedal elements on deskside and laptop workstations running 64-bit Windows® and Unix operating systems.

The world’s largest aerospace and defense contractors rely on FieldView for productivity, workflow automation, and accuracy as they develop next-generation workflows based on multiple solver engines, multi-physics data, and distributed HPC resources. Global automotive companies, including Japan’s largest automaker, have developed their engineering capabilities using FieldView as a standard CFD post-processing tool.

“Major improvements in parallel scaling are seen with this release for solutions based on both tetrahedral and arbitrary polyhedral meshes,” says Dr. Godo. “Our collaboration with our solver partners has produced high-quality data exchange capabilities that take full advantage of the parallel improvements introduced with FieldView 12.1. Our customers’ ability to ask and answer complex questions, even as they are working to reduce their turnaround times, has improved significantly.”

One such partner, ACUSIM Software, maker of the general-purpose, finite element-based CFD flow solver AcuSolve™, hails the benefits of FieldView 12.1.

"The AcuSolve new direct reader in FieldView provides our users with an easy and efficient method to access and visualize key AcuSolve results, supporting vital features from our most recent release," says Dr. Farkin Shakib, ACUSIM founder and president. "The combination of AcuSolve and FieldView provides an excellent solution environment for today's complex fluids only and multiphysics simulations."

New visualization features provide further enhancement All FieldView 12.1 users will benefit from new image quality and control features that augment the application’s renowned visual presentation capabilities. Image quality tools include advanced lighting controls, anti-aliasing, and the ability to incorporate background images containing pictures and logos. Another new tool, multiple color mapping, will enable engineers to visually draw distinctions between different variables in a single image or animation – illustrating multiple physical properties, such as shock vs. axial-flow, or model elements, such as temperature of wall vs. flow domain.

“These new image control features build on FieldView’s traditional strength of superior presentation capabilities,” Dr. Godo says. “Clearly and effectively communicating complex simulation results in order to deliver answers and insights quickly requires powerful, yet easy to use, visualization tools, and FieldView 12.1 provides the best in the industry.”

New release brings similar improvements to new platforms The new release for Apple MAC OS (version 10.5) delivers high performance with a native MAC / Intel FieldView port. “FieldView and MAC make life easy and productive for the SimCenter team. FieldView is used to support our roles as CFD practitioners and developers of both software and methods, and the 12.1 release has performed solidly on both MAC systems and our LINUX servers,” said Steve Karman, research professor, Ph.D., UT SimCenter at Chattanooga.

FieldView 12.1 will be the first release to include a 64-bit FieldView server for Windows HPC Server family of operating systems from Microsoft. Microsoft and Intelligent Light are working together to insure that HPC clusters running Windows HPC Server get the best possible performance from their hardware investment.

About Intelligent Light www.ilight.com Intelligent Light, located in Rutherford, New Jersey, was founded in 1984 with a mission to provide the scientific and engineering community with the best possible tools for understanding data and communicating results. The company provides CFD post-processing and big data visualization capability, under the industry leading FieldView brand and through its Applied Research Group, to thousands of HPC users in the aerospace, automotive and general manufacturing industries. Their unique development team is composed of CFD leaders, computer scientists, and visualization experts focused on listening to clients and delivering products that meet their needs.

FieldView, FieldView FVX, and FieldView ATViewer are trademarks of Intelligent Light. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

FieldView 12.1 excels with large data. Image shows 80M cell space shuttle simulation results using background image feature and lighting controls available in FieldView version 12.1. Simulation data courtesy of NASA Johnson Space Center.