The company I work for is interested in acquiring some CFD software so that I can undertake the occasional analysis. During university I took a couple CFD courses and used CFX and Fluent on several projects, so although I'm far from an expert, I have a decent understanding of CFD.

The work I'd be doing focuses on air flows within buildings. I initially looked at AirPak (basically Fluent with the pre- and post-processing modified to facilitate building analysis), but it is WAY out of our price range. I've taken a look at FloWizard and it seems like it might be a good fit, but I would like to see if there were any programs comparable to it in terms of price and performance before I just jump on it.

I have, however, had a hard time tracking down any low-cost CFD packages that have the usability of FloWizard. Although I'm aware that there are many free, open-source options available, I simply don't have the time that I anticipate it taking to get a workflow established using these applications (that said, if there were an open-source, reasonably usable alternative, I'd obviously love to hear about that).

So, if anyone could suggest any CFD packages on the lower end of the price spectrum that maintain some modicum of usability -- basically, analogs of FloWizard -- I would greatly appreciate it.

Many thanks,

Josh Kjenner

CD-adapco has a package called STAR-Design which has comparable (if not better) capabilities as FloWizard as well as a 3D geometry modelling capability, you also have efdlab from Nika which again has similar capabilities but I don't think it has the 3D modeller.