Upfront CAE should drive innovation, not validation

Anyone that has used, seen or even heard of Upfront CAE will admit that it has come along way in the last 5-10 years. The software developers try to make it as easy as possible. They strive to make the UI slick and modern, guide you through the process and provide you sound answers to your questions. They even provide answers to questions, you probably didn't think about.

But I think many of us get focused on "the number" - pressure drop, max temperature, Cv, whatever. I think we all should take a minute, step back and try interpreting what design decisions to make, based on the information provided.

There is so much information that can be provided, but we as engineers have to think of the various techniques and pick "our favorites". For example, there are a variety of ways to determine the pressure drop in a system (cut planes, summary files, bulk data, probing) - which should I use? Very simple, the one the fits your process. But ask yourself, ok, that is the value. But what is causing that value, where are the recirculation regions, where is the largest gradient -- do all of these occur where I expect them to occur? If not, why? Sometimes there will be large gradients in a gap, for example, not much you can do about that. But often gradients are happening in other regions of the model - those you can fix.

Same applies to all of the CAE problems out there. Keep pushing yourself to ask, why, and what if, and how can I improve my design. The information is there, we just need to know how to use it.