[Far]

Dear Frends

I have an offer as support/appliation engineer in Ansys channel parter for the middle east region. My respnsiblities shall be 1)Sale the Ansys products 2) provide training 3)provide consultancy servercis to industry and Universities.

I want to know:

1. Is this good job?

2. What are the chances to get the job at the Ansys Europe and Ansys USA after this expereince.

Looking for your comments with pro and cons Thanking you in advance

Regards
Far

[Yur]

Hi Far,

I'm doing currently an internship at a CFD company in Europe as support/application engineer. So I think it's quite same as the offer you got.

I must say that the job is really good, CFD is a growing business. And the chance to get a job in Europe or USA are also big if you ask me, because you will have experience in the software and applied methods.

Best regards.

[Far]

Could you please tell the main responsibilities of support/application engineer?

Selling the CFD product is also the job of CFD support/application engineer? Or my job is combination of support/application engineer and sales engineer? Will it be more beneficial to have flavor of both?

And Thank you for your help in making my mind clear to my next destination

[Far]

Also I am interested in finding the common problems the user find in the CFD products. Are they more towards the research? or simple problems e.g. convergence issue, mesh issues, selection of turbulence model, results reliability issues or how to enable/use some feature in CFD code.

What is the importance of meshing skill for support/application engineer?

[Yur]

Main tasks are executing of aerodynamic methods on customer related products. This could be everything, sensors, cars, buildings etc. As support engineer you will help the customer with executing these methods. As application engineer, you do pre and postprocess cases and finally give a presentation with results and optimization analysis of the product to the customer.

As in youre discription, you will probably combine sales and support. Ofcourse its nice to know the both aspects of the jobs. But if youre starting, then I think its better to learn one side, before starting the other.

How do you understand research? You want to develop CFD software? Or optimize models based on cfd analysis?

Meshing skills are really important. I didn't had any meshing experience before I started, but you need at least base knowledge of common meshing tools. And knowledge of linux and scripting is also quite important.

[Far]

for scripting which language is in high demand? : TCL/Tk, Perl or Python

I have very rich experience in Gambit, Gridgen and Turbogrid with basic knowledge in ICEM. Should I learn more ICEM CFD?

But how do you know the inside of sensors, if it not your field for example if you have experience of aerospace CFD or something else.

How much time is normally provided by customers for CFD analysis and presentation of results?

What type of common difficulties normally they have?

are they from industry or universities?

[Far]

By research I mean developing new models using UDF or optimizing the results based on CFD analysis.

I guess the main source of error in CFD analysis, by the customers, is due to low quality grid or with non sufficient mesh resolution? Please correct me if I am wrong.

But if youre starting, then I think its better to learn one side, before starting the other

Although I am not new comer in CFD field, I have six years experience. But as application/support engineer I have no experience.

[Yur]

I think Python is most important. About the mesh tools, I can't say enough, simply because I am quite new in CFD (1,5 year experience now, from which 2 months fulltime). But if you know the basic methodoligy of meshing, then it shouldn't be that difficult to learn new tools. Although ANSA would be a nice one for youre resumé.

The time to pre and postprocess a case is ofcourse different for every case. For example, a full car could take a couple of months, while a sensor could take only a few weeks. It all about what the customer wants. It can be that they want to compare CFD to experiment. Then you'll need to apply different physics to get the most accurate results.

What you said about the common error by customers is correct. But also a wrong case setup, for example wrong parameters or boundary conditions. Simply because they don't know the software good enough.

I think you will be part of a team, in which you will only do one kind of product. And mostlikely in a company such as ANSYS, there are several teams. Automorive, aerospace, complex fluids etc etc.

[Far]

Yur thank you for useful discussion. Can you tell where Python or any other scripting language is used in CFD.

[daveatstyacht]

Far,
Python and other scripting languages tend to be most useful for automating the processes involved in CFD. So for instance, say you have a 2d airfoil section which is going to be analyzed for a large range of speeds and angles of attack. Manually changing the initial and boundary conditions as well as launching the program itself can become tedious and needlessly time consuming. Script files provide a means of automating the process. This becomes more important as the number of runs increases both to alleviate the burden on you the engineer from having to waste time performing repetitive task as well as a means of quality control by ensuring that human error in the process is reduced. Some CFD programs are better suited for this automation than others. Taken to its extreme, automation combined with robust mesh generation can reduce the job of the CFD engineer to primarily interpreting results rather than performing meshing and other preprocessing task (you need a really robust mesh generation tool for this to actually happen).
Dave

[Far]

daveatstyacht thank you for giving me insight. You are correct about the human error factor.

is Python more useful than TCL/TK and PERL or it is just matter of choice. Or it depends upon which scripting language is supported by particular mesh generation and solver software?
I recently came across the script for generation of O-grid from the H grid for the pointwise mesher, which is written in TCL/TK and contain about 4000 programming lines!!!! So can we do this in python as well?

[daveatstyacht]

Far,
The question about which script language is "more useful" is dependent on a number of factors. Namely, if a particular script language is supported by a given mesh or CFD program you need to use that will tend to push you towards using that script language. Of course if there is no built in preference then you would likely pick the language you are most experienced in or comfortable with to do any scripts you need. I would say (and this is based solely on my own personal opinion) that python is a pretty good script language to know and less painful than perl. Python also integrates better with languages like C/C++/fortran and does a whole slew of other things beyond just scripting. I have no experience with TCL/TK so I cant comment on it. I suspect that the place you will be working will have script files already developed for some task. If something can be done in one script language it can probably be done in another.
Dave