I am suprised that CFX let their employees write such unjustifiable and frankly wrong nonsense in a public forum. In my opinion it reflects badly on both the company and its product.

I've been in the industry for almost 10 years, and in that time I've used all of the big three codes at one time or another.

I've just been through a thorough code selection process in which we considered CFX, Fluent and STAR-CD.

Although I was fairly impressed with CFX-5, I am certainly not prepared to invest time and money training my engineers to use a product with a very uncertain future.

It is no secret that CFX is up for sale. It's no secret either that no-one wants to buy it. AEA want to sell CFX because it loses money, no-one wants to buy it because frankly it is a rather unattractive product compared to its rivals.

Most industries can support a market leader and a major competitor, almost always the third place company fades away to nothing.

In the last 5 years CFX has been moving backwards at a rate of knots. From a clear second place in the big three, it has been overtaken and thoroughly eclipsed by STAR-CD. So while STAR and FLUENT battle out the lead CFD is left as an also ran; a Cyrus to AMD and Intel, a Virgin Cola to Pepsi and Coke and an OS/2 to Linux and Windows.

The market doesn't lie and provides a very efficeint form of natural selection. You only have to look and see how Flomerics are forced to lay off 20% of their workforce after years and years of excellent performance.

So in my opinion you should limit your choice of code to the market leader and its close challenger. Unless you have a very good reason otherwise, I suggest you choose a product with a clear future.

Once again the punters don't lie.

Regards

William

Sometimes it's really too bad that anyone can post whatever they want on the internet. This posting is a prime example. It's credibility speaks for itself, so I don't have much to say.

To add a word to the contrary, the comparisons between CFX and it's competitors on this forum have been pretty objective, even coming from CFX employees. There have been a few minor details which were not quite right, but I don't see how that could be construed as "unjustifiable nonsense". You're completely overreacting.

Dan.

Where are you from? Fluent? Star-CD? Flomerics? At least Robin Steed says he is from CFX.

Astrid

He/she actually sounds like a pissed off,recently fired CFX employee.

I also work for CFX. I'm one of the flow solver developers working on CFX-5. I have stated on the forum in the past that I work for CFX, long before Robin showed up, and I'm not hiding it. Probably some of the people reading this forum didn't know it, but some definitely do.

The message that William has posted is interesting. It seems like a pretty pointed statement for someone that is supposedly just a CFD software (CFX/Star/Fluent/whatever) user.

Dan.

Astrid,

I responded, but looks like it showed up in the thread above.

Dan.

Clearly reference to market forces is a valid argument proven in many walks of life. Another imporatnt issue is growth rate. The information that I have seen indicates that STAR-CD has the highest growth rate at present.

As someone who could care less (at this point) about who's software is 'best', I do find it amusing that those who have the worst to say about CFX hide behind first names with no further contact details. In my experience, this is akin to stabbing someone in the back. As has been said before, at least those CFX employees that gave their opinions on the oppositions software did so very openly!

More Chevrolets are sold than Mercedes in North America, but does that make the Chevrolet better?

I am concerned about your comments, William, as I am a CFX-User and hope that some of the future concerns are covered by a CFX representative... In this uncertain, ecomonic time, I would imagine any commercial software company can be on somewhat rocky ground...

Dan,

Of course the question was meant for William, not for Williams.

Astrid

Guy Guys Guys, Lets just leave this now ! i thought the idea of the discussion forum was to have constructive exchanges of ideas and views. Robin obviously had strong thoughts on the subject and voiced them and backed them up with clear examples. Rightly or wrongly. Now if William were to come up with some constructive views as to the differences between the codes then that I feel would be most interesting. But lets all get away from the nastyness of all this. Lets hear some constructive comments.

I think you are all being a little harsh on William. Although I think that he overstates his point a little the observations he makes are very valid. Almost all of the posts in this thread seem to attack William or his post without making any reference to what he said in it. I don't see why people seem to get all tribal and irrational about their choice of CFD code.

I've been a Flow-3d/CFX user for over seven years, and in general I'm very pleased with it (I have my gripes but who doesn't) I don't know if it's the best CFD code of all, but it suits my purposes just fine for now. However, before I was a 'loyal' CFX user I was a similarly 'loyal' PHOENICS user and look what happened there.

I've read William's post several times and I understand his logic entirely. When I chose CFX, I chose it because I thought it was the best CFD code for my applications. When I decided to make the leap from PHOENICS to CFX it was a difficult transition both for myself and my company. Changing CFD codes is expensive, in my case it proved a very worthwhile expense. It was a gamble we made partly on the merits of the code and partly because of the merits of the company behind it. My point is that when I decided to make the transition I did it in the belief that the processes I built for my company and the skills I acquired myself would be valid for a good many years to come.

If I'm honest with myself, if I had to make the same choice today I'm not sure I could justify choosing CFX. Not because its any worse than STAR or Fluent (I don't believe that it is) but because the code and the company have an uncertain future. CFX does lose money, CFX is very publicly up for sale, there have been no buyers forthcoming (as far as we know) and most importantly because it has lost significant market share to its rivals.

I'm sure I'm not the only CFX user that feels this way, in fact I know I'm not the only CFX user to worry about the long term viability of the company and its product.

Will I be changing codes? Not yet. I hope CFX does flourish, because I've invested part of myself in its success, because I've invested part of my company in its success, because I care about the livelihood of CFX's employees and most of all because I still think CFX is a good product.

Matthew

I agree with your thoughts almost totally Matthew, it just seemed that the 'best' code was being selected as the one with the most sales (which in itself sounds more like a marketing/sales pitch than engineering).

I too am very concerned about the company CFX and their employees. Of all of the software our company uses, the support staff of CFX has and will continue to be the best. I consider some of them my friends and greatly hope that there is a solution for AEA's future...

GNU-CFX is coming and will crush all commercial software

Definitely not from this ex-CFX-employee!!! Honest!

Matthew,

Let me reassure you, and everyone else. No matter who owns it, CFX has a very bright future in CFX-5. There is an extremely experienced, motivated and well knit group of people working around the clock on CFX-5. Believe me, it will become the CFD software of choice in the years to come. From what I've seen of some of our competitors offerings, they should be afraid, very afraid.

I think people are being harsh on William for a few reasons. First, his post was somewhat emotional and in some ways he did make completely speculative comments.

Furthermore, he posted anonymously, like yourself. No email address, no statement of where he works, etc.. I personally don't like it when people do this, and makes me wonder what they are trying to hide.

Like William, you have also chosen to remain anonymous and make some completely speculative statements without any information to back them up. Why is that?

Dan.

http://www.cfx-5.com

Can you elaborate on your experience with Phoenix? The code looks attractive to me because of price, compilable aspects and their willingness to describe their computational methods. In particular, what is the history behind your comment..." and look what happened there". Thanks