Issue 029 – January 16, 2021

More Updates: ParaView, Rhino3D & Membership

Hey there,

It Robin from CFD Engine and this week I’m still on the trail of shiny new stuff. I’ve been checking out a couple of updates that you might be interested in – ParaView 5.9 & Rhino3d v7 – plus I have an update of my own, on the membership idea I floated before Christmas.

Shiny stuff first.

Quick refresher, my core CFD toolkit looks like this:

  • Rhino3D for all of my CAD & snappyHexPrep;
  • An OpenFOAM.com release for meshing, solving & post-processing;
  • ParaView for visual post-processing;

With the new OpenFOAM.com release that landed in December (see last week’s issue), Rhino3D v7 which debuted in November and a new ParaView release just around the corner, it seems like all my upgrades have come at once.

I tend not to jump on upgrades immediately, but I’m always keen to see what shiny new things are on offer. So, here’s what I’m looking forward to in the new versions of ParaView & Rhino…

ParaView 5.9

This new version of ParaView hasn’t been officially released, but there are several release candidates that you can try right now. The most recent, RC3, is looking pretty good on my Mac.

The Kitware release notes are always detailed and well worth a scroll – here’s what I picked up on my first pass

  • A new reader for Converge CFD – always good to see readers for more CFD codes;
  • Extractors – a new filter type, mainly for use with Catalyst, that can automate the writing of datafiles, images;
  • Ray-tracing improvements including a new version of OSPRay and a whole host of new materials for the path tracer;
  • Improved polyhedral cell conversion;
  • You can now add additional text sources & filters to charts;
  • Colour maps have been sorted into groups, including an “isoluminant” group for maps with “perceptually uniform luminance” which I know will excite some people.

SSAO

The feature I’m most looking forward to though, is a new rendering option – screen space ambient occlusion or SSAO. It’s essentially “self-shadowing” which really brings out the details in complex models – learn more about it here. The implementation in v5.9 works in real time (as opposed to the ray tracing options) & it works really well. I’m not sure how good it will be for data plots, but I think it looks great for geometry images (see below).

Detailed geometry images using state space ambient occlusion in ParaView 5.9

Rhino v7

I can understand it if you’re not on board with this one, I’m in the minority here. But if you’re on the lookout for a CAD/pre-processing tool then I recommend you at least take the free trial of Rhino3D for a spin.

Rhino has always had some interesting tools that are well suited for aero/hydrodynamic surfacing, but it looks as if this update has brought us two more.

SubD

In previous versions of Rhino we had two geometry classes: NURBS (continuous, spline-based surfaces) and mesh (faceted, discrete approximations of our geometry). The subD update in Rhino v7 adds a third geometry class, spline-based subdivision surfaces (SubD) to the mix. Such surfaces should be accurate enough for CFD, whilst being easy to modify, morph & control 🤞

I like the promise of SubD modelling – being able to quickly create organic flowing surfaces which can easily be pushed & pulled around. I can see myself using it in the early phases of a project, quickly modifying surfaces to get a feel for their aero sensitivity &/or creating aerodynamically “interesting” shapes. I just hope it lives up to the promise.

Quad Remesh

Rhino has always had a decent set of mesh tools (for a CAD package), great for creating faceted models to feed snappyHexMesh and to repair / de-feature meshes from elsewhere (scan, photogrammetry etc).

The new quad remesh tools look really interesting, particularly for retopologising models & reducing mesh count. They should also be a good first step on the journey from scan-to-CAD.

It’s going to set me back £500 to upgrade my copy of Rhino, so I’ll probably grab the trial & take these bits for a spin before I get my chequebook out.

I’m interested to hear how you deal with updates. Is there a code that you jump on the updates as soon as they’re released? Or are you generally a little more reticent? What’s the most out-of-date code that you use & what would it take to pry you away from it? Drop me a note, I’m always interested to hear your take on anything I write.

Membership

Before I go, thank you to everyone that responded to the membership idea that I floated in Issue026 – it was a super-interesting exercise.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t sufficient interest to make it viable right now – maybe one day?

These emails remain unchanged, same weekly cadence, same niche content & same price – free 🙏

Until next week, stay safe,

Robin