Autodesk Falcon

[astracrazy]

Just a quick post, thought it best here for all of us using google sketch and want some form of easy cfd.

http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/falcon/

trying it at the moment and as far as i'm aware its completly free. You can do 2d and 3d simulaton. Its quiet good! All you need to do is export from sketchup in .stl (plug in easily found on google)

let me know what you think

[Jersey Tom]

Good in what manner? That it provides accurate results, or that it makes colorful curvy lines? The latter I can do in Photoshop.

[N12ck]

JT is right, the curvy lines are good for people to look at, but the useful bits are the data, drag coefficients etc, also pressure gradients and velocity gradients are particularly useful

[astracrazy]

like i said its basic. For me at the moment i'm learning so it helps me see the airflow.

It was just something to show, don't shoot me. Just didn't know if people had seen it

edit: it does give you pressure and velocity. I'm just having a play with it

[N12ck]

ahh very good, do you not need to own autodesk first?

[astracrazy]

no just need to sign up. like i said its not the best but worth a look might help slightly

[CottrellGP]

What plugin for sketchup?

[Jersey Tom]

like i said its basic. For me at the moment i'm learning so it helps me see the airflow.

It was just something to show, don't shoot me. Just didn't know if people had seen it

edit: it does give you pressure and velocity. I'm just having a play with it

I'm just saying that you might not necessarily know if it's giving you a true result. In which case if you're using it as a learning tool, you don't want to learn the wrong thing.

[Greg Locock]

Off the top of my head here's the start of a battery of test cases, of course any aero textbook probably has more worked examples.

Flow through a venturi. correlate with http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19930083792

Any airfoil for which you have Cl and Cd plots, vs alpha

a sphere

a rotating sphere

[astracrazy]

What plugin for sketchup?

no you export your model in .stl (which you need a plugin for) then import it into this

[tomislavp4]

Tried it. It´s better then nothing I guess but no good for serious stuff. As far as I can tell, you can´t specify rotating bodies nor a rolling floor. There are no mesh-control settings either.

I think this is made for car-designers, so they can assess their early designs without bringing in the aero-guys.

[RicME85]

More than enough for Formula Sketch then

[astracrazy]

its clearly not as good as paid software, but for free and easy to use its a start.

[Greg Locock]

The old workaround for lack of a moving floor is to use two mirror images. Doesn't get around the rotating wheel problem.

[astracrazy]

two mirror images?