Hi

At that current time I am working wiht Fluent. We are thinking about change to Star CD or use both.

Anyone can give me some information. What is it better?

Thanks.

That's a lot like the question, "Which is better, Intel or AMD?". Each has their favourite and that is mostly based on which they learnt to use first.

I don't really want to give my comments in public on this, as it could all too easily open a flamewar, each side passionately defending their product of choice.

It all depends on what is important to you, in my opinion. Need a command line? Powerful scripting? Good free surface predictions? Do you prefer to hand-build meshes or use paramteric scripts to rebuild meshes easily? etc. etc. - Examine your chosen field and preferred way of working and make your choice based on the different strengths of the different products.

Lastly, do not believe everything you're told. Seriously.

It's also worth thinking about the companies behind the products and the stability/dependability of the products themselves. Is the company continually hiring and firing new management? Do you need to download dozens of random patches whenever the solver falls apart? How responsive and valuable is the support?

I can give you the advice not to change to STAR-CD. Fluent can be handled easyerly and is by far the more modern cfd-tool. The actual version of STAR-CD 3.15 is now 3 years old and if they don't release a new version in the next 2 or 3 month we will switch to FLUENT. In my opinion the price which we have to pay is to high for old fasion Star-CD. Just compare the features of both actual versions(e.q.rigid body motion, RSM-turbulence, aeroacoustics,etc....) and you will realize that Fluent is absolute superior. This is of course only my opinion and nobody has to share it.

b.g.

F.K.

If you want to take some Star-CD licenses, keep the first year some licenses of Fluent: Star-CD isn't a software easy to handle. You will have then a back-up software the time to learn how to use Star.

The next version of Star will come "normally" in March. I agree with FK: there is question mark about strategy of development of new version of Star-CD.

Hi

Thanks for your response, expecially to Steve, F.k. and HVN.

I think like F.K. is a good idea keep both software.

Pherhaps FLUENT is better than STAR-CD. Currently I think FLUENT is very good. Also I think that for the most of applications you don´t need the better software only a good software.

You can see that my english is not very good. I´m sorry.

hmmm, F.K. you wouldnt happen to work for fluent would you?

Fluent 6.0 was delayed several years and when it was released, some of the promised features like mesh motion were just beta-features.

To those who have the experience with both Fluent & Star-CD, can I ask how long roughly did it take for you to acclimatize when you switched from say, Star-CD to Fluent? Operation-wise I mean. I'd appreciate it.

I have both.

In terms of usage, STAR-CD is your regular huge chunk of FORTRAN with an ill-fitting GUI wrapped around it. Set up your model, submit it, post-process it. It's so obvious that the GUI and solver writers don't talk. You can pick it up in a few days if you plough through the tutorials.

Fluent is a bit different. I got to the same level as STAR-CD in about the same time (a few days). But the environment you are in is SO much bigger, more flexible and basically more fun that I doubt I'll ever stop learning new tricks.