Standalone Meshers: Are they a dying art form?

I grew up in a world of CFD where the "code" consisted of a Pre-processor, Solver and Post-processor. Seemed pretty straight forward at the time. I now cringe when I hear those terms. Feels as though someone is dating themselves and using old slang. You know the feeling?!

However, there must be a large market for it as I still hear Harpoon, Gridgen and Hypermesh mentioned from time to time in various companies. Fluent still markets "GAMBIT" as a separate program/interfaces etc. ANSYS acquired ICEM CFD a few years back and morphed an FEA version, AI*Environment out of it as well. Plus, I always thought the guys at FEMAP had cool jobs. Their HQ was only a few miles from my home and I worked for a company that had close ties to them and visited their offices quite frequently.

Why did I think the FEMAP guys were cool? Well, they were able to fulfill a need out there in the market place that others could not. They were in an elite category but didn't necessarily give the vibe of an "elitist". They were hard working guys in this little office that were one of few in the engineering software world in the 90s. They have been since acquired by SDRC, then EDS, then UGS, then Siemens. You get the idea.

Meshing has come along way since then. The guys that were doing that stuff were way into it. It was not uncommon for meshing to take a couple weeks, literally. Seemed "streamlined" at the time, as I shake my head and type. Clearly there is still a market where large companies have "Meshing Engineers" on staff still. That market is getting smaller and smaller, but they will always be able to find jobs. They might have to look hard, but they are there.

The coolness of meshing is dying as well. We just take for granted that models can be meshed. We do not view it as an art form that it is. I still smile at the image to the left. Kudos ICEM! It is leap years away from being a push button, but it sure is pretty nonetheless. If you have numerous years of experience on a meshing program, I'd venture to say this would still take days to complete. This mesh was used for an aero-acoustics and aero-dynamics analysis, hence the need for a nice HEX mesh. This is hardcore analysis.

I do believe meshing is still an art form. However, the role of the artist has changed. I used to view the guy driving the mesher as the artist. But the real honor of artist should go to the developer. They are the ones that are up all hours of the night testing their masterpiece. They are being pushed constantly to develop a program that creates the perfect mesh in a click of a button. Anyone can take geometry and create a mesh of some sort. But to create an intelligent mesh that places the correct element type in the correct location with the correct quality everytime, he is the artist. You want to see automatic, check out the image below.

Model brought in directly from Pro/engineer and with one click, I created an optimal mesh. I tried refining the mesh, but found the original was more than adequate. Perhaps my taste in art is changing with age, but That! is a pretty mesh.