Follow CFdesign on Twitter

I wrote about Twitter a few weeks ago. I kind of thought it was this neat little tool that allowed me to stay in touch with similar minded people. I am beginning to appreciate how much twitter or tweets can be used to keep customers up to date on the latest and greatest.

It is interesting to me how many medias that we can use to stay connected and informed. Each person is different. Some people think Twitter, for example, takes time and effort. Others of us think that it saves a tremendous amount of time capturing information.

Trying to install Catia v5 R18 on Vista 32-bit!!!!?

Reaching out to anyone that can help. You can save the "I told you so comments" :) I realize that v5 isn't supported on 32-bit Vista, however, I know that people have gotten R17 and R16 to run, so one would assume that R18 can run.

The installer for v5 doesn't even run on 32 bit, so I copied the installation files over manually. I set the env variables as well, so v5 opens. I just can't get the license service to start. I use the i4cfg.exe to set my laptop as the license server. Seems to go ok, until I try and start the service.

I run i4cfg -start from the Command Prompt and receive. I get..

Followed by a...

GRL-2050: *** Fatal error from I4LLMD:
License database on an invalid node.
CFG-20040: Error(s) reported by 1 or more services: 'Start Services' failed
Press any key to continue . . .

in the command prompt window. I noticed that my targetid is completely different than the one I used for XP, but I doubt that has anything to do with it.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to get it running??? Other than this roadblock, I have been pretty happy with Vista in general. Much more to come on that front...

The Zen of Implementing Upfront CFD

The traditional use of the word "Zen", typically refers to a from of Buddhism that concentrates on learning through meditation and intuition. It is said that enlightenment can come through meditation and not pure faith. So, how does this apply to Upfront CFD or Upfront Simulation for that matter? Hang tight...

Engineers love a process. Whatever it is in the world, we like to follow a certain path. We tend to implement new tools to our process by following a traditional path. Look at how we implement simulation tools. We usually do an internal huddle to make a commitment to seeing what's out there. We invite all of the vendor's to come in and show their stuff. Often we prepare a model for them to "prove" themselves or even better, we prepare a benchmark. How much thought is given to the model we give the vendor? How about the benchmark? What are we benchmarking?

Typically, we are benchmarking something we already know. A model where we "could" have used an upfront tool, but instead we tested it. Ok, fair enough. So, from the vendor's perspective, they just proved that you "could" have provided some value last year. Is that good enough? Often not!

So, let's say it was. We would probably then sign up for a regional training course. Nominate our 2-3 hotshot guys to all attend for 2-5 days of training. We go through the training, we all head back to the office and are ready to go. We may even crack open a tutorial to ensure we are really ready and proficient. THEN, we take a look at our real problem, our current problem. The problem that we should haven been thinking about from Day 1. If you are a valve company, wouldn't it make more sense to learn how to solve valve type problems? What is the benefit of learning the history of meshing if you are unable to plot a pressure drop or obtain a Cv value?

It's amazing how beneficial it can be to take a step back (follow the zen path) and ask ourselves, if I had this upfront tool tomorrow, what is the first problem I would like to solve? What problem is really holding us back as a company from making more money, reducing failure, increasing life cycle, allowing for creativity. Simply put, what problem can I solve to put me ahead of the guy down the street? That is the problem you should benchmark. Push the vendor to solve your pain and show you the path to solving pains on your own. This to me, is the path to enlightenment. Let's be fair, depending on the size of the problem, we should be willing to pay for the time.

Ask yourself, is the vendor I am dealing with able to address this problem?

The # of Upfront CFD Blogs is Growing...

I love to hear slightly different perspectives from various people on the same topic. Two other guys on our team are writing blogs about Upfront CFD/Upfront CAE and their various subtopics.

Jeff Waters is along time Upfront CAE guy with an eye towards the impact it has on engineering businesses. He writes his blog, lifeupfront, from Rhode Island in the US. His target audience tends to be engineering management, from the engineering manager all the way through to the C-level folks.

James Neville heads up our services team in Europe. He is way into cars in general and many of his posts are geared toward well, gearheads. He writes his blog, Turbocharged Engineering, from Giessen, Germany.

Check out the awesome video on James' latest post. Pretty sophisticated analysis where we see the cooling of the liquid in the cup, conduction into the mug itself and then the transient effects of a fan pulling air up from the top. Awesome!!

My New Fascination: Twitter

As we speak, I am sitting in London, heading home after a week of traveling in Europe on business. Spent my time split between England and Germany. I had a chance to dig a bit deeper into microblogging a bit. I'll leave it up to the wikipedia link to give you a background and history on microblogging. In a nutshell, it is a fast way to keep those in your "circle" up to date on what you are up to. The concept exists on Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites. But probably the most popular is twitter.

A few people responded to my blog posts and asked when I was going to get into tweeting, twitter etc.. I'll be honest, I didn't get it at first. I then saw this post on demogirl.com and it began to make a bit more sense. But then saw the awesome video below and it sealed the deal for me.

I am now a huge fan and somewhat obsessed with twitter. For a guy that travels a ton and really likes to stay connected, it is a perfect outlet to stay in touch with friends and family. I am definitely relatively new to the whole thing and we'll see how long it lasts, but if you are interested, you can find me here.

Is Dassault Systemes getting their house in order?

To me, Dassault Systemes always seemed to be this massive French company that owns a bunch of technology companies, but always just sat back and let these companies run as separate entities. Always known as having CATIA as the heart of their PLM inititative. They began a campaign of acquiring technologies about 10 years ago. Here is a quick list of the highlights.

SolidWorks (1997)
SRAC (2001)
ABAQUS (2005)
Matrix One (2006)
ICEM Surf (2007)
Engineous (2008)

DS has always done a great job acquiring some of the most successful companies. What they have also done well is just leave these companies to operate as a bunch of small profitable, successful entities. The CATIA/SolidWorks combination is a great example of two extremes that serve different markets and were allowed to continue doing what they do.

Small calculated decisions seemed to be made over the years. Years ago, there was a ton of buzz about the operability of CATIA and SolidWorks. But relatively nothing changed. Then a slight change to the SolidWorks logo that added a little "DS". People acted as "this was it, now things will change." Again, hardly any change.

But things seem to be changing recently. DS has recently re-branded ABAQUS to Simulia. But a bolder move is the buzz that SolidWorks is now, Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corporation. The Cosmos line is now SolidWorks Simulation. May seem like simple name changing, but I think it falls in line with the industry, in general.

Only a few years ago, there were numerous companies in the MCAD and FEA space, these numbers are dwindling due to acquisitions etc. In the not so distant future, there will only be a "few" monster companies that are able to offer us (the consumer) "everything". Sounds relatively familiar.

Circa, 1995, the MCAD world seemed pretty set in stone in the pre "PLM" days. You had PTC, UGS, SDRC and DS battling it out in the 3D space. Autodesk was the master of its own domain in the 2D world. In the FEA market there was MSC, HKS and ANSYS along with some of the other players like SRAC and SDRC. But for the most part, this was the playing field. Then SolidWorks and others blasting into the market and simply changed the way we look at things. This was in the days when a 3D MCAD investment was on the order of ~$40k ($20k for software and $20k for a computer to run it).

Point of my rant here is that I love the fact that these massive companies are becoming powerhouses in their own right. No doubt there will be some serious technology leaps that are made. No doubt a serious challenge for them is to manage all of the technology and not forget their biggest asset, us, the users. Look at our friends Microsoft. More importantly, I am excited to see what disruptive technology will come along to again change the market upside down.

Skype Caller ID now working in North America?!!!

Wow, this is huge. I stumbled upon some great news. This has always been one of the main sticky points with making the complete switch to Skype for an office phone. But, I think this added feature, will really push many more into taking the plunge.

If you just go into your account and select the CALLER ID option, it is self explanatory. You can choose to have it display your SkypeIn number or your mobile. I just tested it with my SkypeIn number and it worked like a charm. It displayed the number with "UNKNOWN CALLER".

I am switching it over to my mobile number to see what happens. Go check it out. I am interested in hearing people's experiences. I am assuming many people already know about this. I heard rumors that it worked, but didn't get time to test until today.

CFdesign v10: Now Available!!!

We just released CFdesign v10 to the world. All active customers can access it via the new Customer Portal. Tons of exciting new features are in v10, I have been using it for the last six months and absolutely love it.

I think user's will find a ton of useful tools in the Customer Portal, including...

• A User's Forum
• Access to the Knowledge Base
• CFD-tv
• Pre-recorded Power User sessions
• License Management tools
• Ability to submit a technical support request
  

Give it a whirl and let us know what you think.