any clues when then next version of star is out? I heard it is going to be v4 but im not sure, any ideas any one?

I have heard it's 3.2 and I've also heard that it may (with a following wind) show up this year.

They have been working on STAR v4.0 for over three years!!

Back in the mid nineties STAR could do many things that other codes could not. Today, that is no longer the case.

You can chalk it up to lousy management, lack of vision and downright stubborness.

I am a long time user of the code and I feel that it is really a shame that it has lost it's edge.

v4.0 for three years? Then why bother with v3.2 at all? Some stop-gap solution as marketing ammo?

and don't forget the current version is now over two years old!!! I guess cd-adapco must have internal difficulties.

Fluent 6.0 was more than 2 years delayed. So what is your problem? Is there anything you cant do with the current version?

1) Dynamic grid/solution adaption 2) Robust tet/unstructured solver 3) Expanded and up to date turbulence modeling capabilities 4) An automesher that works, and does not produce degenerate hexahedral junk 5) Monitoring/posting capabilities that do not require writing a subroutine (posdat.f) 6) Participating media radiation modeling 7) Combustion module that does not require knowledge of "black magic" or "dumb luck" 8) A parallel solver that is "seamless" 9) Domain interfacing that works well (arbitrary interfaces are quite finicky) 10) Coupled solver

I could go on, but I won't.

Hi,

My company is currently looking at getting some state of the art CFD software (we currently only have Ansys/Flotran). STAR is one of the packages we are considering and proof of ongoing development is one of our considerations.

From what has been said here would I be right in thinking that they are having difficulty in this area? Have they had a lot of technical people leave?

I know that CD-adapco hired some of Fluent's best and brightest back in 1998/1999. Those folks were supposed to deliver on STAR 4.0. I am sure that the late release has little or nothing to do with the developers. The upside here is that they usually are willing to compromise on price.

Ansys now owns CFX and Icemcfd. There will be a stretch of time before those codes arise as an integrated package. However, the future looks very bright. If you are already using Ansys/Flotran, this may be a natural progression for you.

Fluent is always a safe bet. I do not care for their pre-processor, but their code is solid and fairly straightforward to use. Downside is cost.

I'd rather wait 2, 3 years for a solid product than upgrade every year (and patch every couple of months) like for M$ products.

Of course, the age of this 2-year old CFD code is showing...

Just curious, how much does Fluent cost anyway, compared to an equivalent license of STAR-CD? 1:1? 3:2?

i've seen some figures and it seems that it is close to 30% difference in favor of Star. But this does not include any "special" offerings etc.

Dear Joern,

I can't solve highly swirled flows because STAR hasn't an appropriate turbulence model like RSM. I want to mention that the results obtained with k-e rng or kubic k-e etc. are absolutely not satisfied in comparission to measurement.

And in reference to fluent you are right 6.0 took nearly 2 years but now 6.1 is already available. The big problem for STAR is that they don't have a big partner(owner) like Fluent or CFX.

The RSM model is available since years. You could have asked the support people to send you that special version if it is very important for your work. Or you wait the 2 or 3 month until V32 will be released.

I'm not sure if it is a big advantage to just be a small part of a big company.

its interesting that we havent had anybody from star of cd-adapco on here defending the criticisms or singing the praises as yet. There are a few of them that wander around from time to time and post on here, you would have thought that with such an invovled discussion about the relative merits/problems of the current code and the speculation over the release of a new version and any advantages it may have that they would get involved and fight their corner (unless they dont care of course!!) Personally i have only used Star and Phoenics as i am doing a PhD directly after finishing my undergrad degree. And i have to say that Star is far in advance of phoenics (but then again so is my pocket calculator!!). Obviously having not been in industry and only working on one particular application i cannot talk about its full range of solutions but i quite like it. But then i am sure when i go into industry and try another code i may change my mind. For me the sheer adaptability through user coding makes my life easy but then they offer the code free to universities so i dont have a great deal of choice on what i use. It is good to hear such a discussion though. (enter CD-adapco rep stage left!!)

What are the 'special offerings' you mentioned?

Well, for Star there is the academic license with huge discount and then there is also a discount for non-profit organizations. I guess there could be other discounts also because the competition is tough nowadays, at least if the going-to-be customer is requiring an additional discount. I guess Fluent could offer something similar but maybe not exactly which makes the comparison harder... so this is what i mean by special offerings.

The silence is for two reasons:

1) Most of the posts from known CD or Adapco employees offer technical help, so those employees are very likely to be technical staff. Technical staff (from any software company) are very conservative about release dates (release when? But I've got 6 months testing to do yet!) so it's unlikely that they'll openly discuss any planned release date.

2) There's no comeback to statements that say "Your code can't do xyz!". A reply along the lines of "Ok, but our competitor can't do abc!" is just name-calling.