Sculptor by Optimal Solutions
Introduction
Sculptor is the end result of many years of consulting in the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) industry. We found that our in-house analysis tools had evolved into a sophisticated package that is generally useful to CFD engineers, so we formalized our work in an easy-to-use GUI — and the result is Sculptor.
Put simply, Sculptor is shape deformation software. It can arbitrarily deform the shape of a computerized object whose shape is defined by the points of a grid. The grid is defined by a CFD code such as Fluent, StarCD, Plot3d, etc. These codes are used to calculate lift, drag, pressure drop, heat transfer, and related measurements. They have been in use for many years, and together with Sculptor, they open the full potential of CFD.
In the past, reshaping an object such as an airplane wing was a very tedious job, requiring point-by-point adjustment of hundreds or thousands of grid points. But now, Sculptor removes this tedium and makes it easy to reshape an object in just a few minutes. Simply push and pull a few control points in our intuitive GUI and watch your model deform intelligently and smoothly using our proprietary Arbitrary Shape Deformation (ASD) technology. Then, evaluate your new design using your preferred CFD code. It really is that easy!
After making things easy, we decided to take things a step further and include automated shape optimization. Typically, when you are engineering an object, you have a goal in mind, such as minimizing the pressure drop around a pipe elbow. In Sculptor you can pull a few points to reshape the object, then evaluate your new shape (using a CFD code). If the result isn't adequate, then you can adjust a few more points, then reevaluate. Gradually, you manually iterate toward your design objective. However, because computers are very good at iterating, we decided to automate this process. You need only define your design objective, and let Sculptor march toward the solution. Even better, Sculptor may find a shape you've never even thought of. In short, Sculptor eliminates hit-and-miss and hunt-and-peck methods, replacing them with the Optimal Solution.
Put simply, Sculptor's purpose is to make your life easier (as a CFD Engineer), help you find better solutions faster, and ultimately to help you save time and money.
Click here to see Sculptor at work!
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