CFD software selection

Hello hive,

Sorry for the rapid fire questions about my new job, but I love the wealth of knowledge here so I want some of it.

Looks like we're going to use Solidworks here, at least for a while, for modeling and FEA.

Solidworks has it's own plugin Solidworks Flow CFD software, which is e4ither very higher or very terribly regarded. Reportedly it's gotten much better. We're not designing fighter jets, we're building enclosures around generators, about the size of a container. We'll need heat transfer and airflow and need to handle different design considerations. We don't have a large team, and can't deal with a large learning curve.

I;ver used the Simerics product through Creo, and it's excellent. Simerics also has a plugin for Solidworks. Has anyone compared them? The internal tool in Solidworks seems like the easy button, but the folks at Simerics are top notch. How close are we with the native Solidworks CFD?

No experience with SW directly, but Surely SW will give you a demo license to try it out and see if it will work for your needs?  An integrated solution has huge payoff with data management and update speed, so I would think you'd need a really strong argument to move outside of the ecosystem.

Isnt SolidWorks part of the Dassault family. If that is correct then a branch of the family tree is Star CCM. That is a full flegded CFD system. It does have a steep learning curve but can handle anything thrown at it, with the appropriate user guiding the simulation.

The internal CFD option within SolidWorks will likely provide you with enough power to do the simulations you are looking at. It depends on how detailed you want the answers to be compared to the inputs and model detail.

I'd give the SW one a shot, maybe run it on a config you've run thru your other software and look for differences. Without knowing what you're doing, it seems like you're looking for more of a macro, big picture type answer and less concerned with something like ideal placement of cooling holes in turbine parts. If so, I think it's probably solid and user friendly like the rest of the SW suite.