Customer Services
 

Hi guys,

I was just wondering, I am not using any commercial software, but I always see messages posted with questions such as:

- how do I implement boundary conditions with Software x version y (e.g. fluent, CFX or whatever)?

- How do I do simulate turbulent flow, etc...

So, are not all these companies providing Customer Services for that kind of questions? Aren't they helping people to handle their softwares and the black box? Or are these questions too technical for the software people (who might just be busyness people?)? Or is it just too expensive to have that service?

It is not that I am curious, but I tried hard to understand all that.

Since this site is supported by these companies, I understand that it might be for them one way of providing an alternative to the Customer Services, provided for free by a public forum indeed.

Re: Customer Services
 

Dear Patrick,

I could not resist my temptation of replying to you. I think this is the best joke I heard in this year. I was wondering that the companies have so many CFD analysts to do the simulations but why is the Department of Energy is after all companies ! I am also wondering why a big company like General Motors got slammed by 4.9 billion dollar penalty in a car crash lawsuit! Don't they have 'Customer Services' who can tackle this kind of problem happening again in future? Thank you very much Partick to bring up this kind of questions.

Re: Customer Services
 

(1). I am getting the feeling that it is a "junk mail" scheme. (2). Or something like "Internet Hit" statistics. (3). The goal is to sell more copies of the code, to create more statistics, not to solve any problems, GOOD GRIEF !!!

Re: Customer Services
 

Dear John,

A bad workman is always contentious or belligerent with his tools. The problems are not with the commercial softwares, the problems are mostly with the persons who are using it. If the person claims that he or she is a good CFD analyst, no matter what, he or she will come up with may be not very good results but at least reasonable results. However, commercial softwares have some limitations. In some cases, codes are written by an individual or a group of individuals to serve special perpose which have great significant importance in science and engineering.

Re: Customer Services
 

Patrick,

I've had formal training in CFX and Fluent, informal training with Flow-3D.

I've used all 3 codes, Flow-3D the most, then CFX, and then Fluent.

While I'll not attempt to rank the services, I'll just say that the response from all three ranged from good to excellent, and it varied over this range for any one provider from time to time.

It is possible to obtain these codes (older versions at least) without paying for the customer support features, especially in parts of the world where copyrights are not honored uniformly. I believe that 'educational' licenses without support are or were available. In these cases, the companies will not provide support and alternatives must be sought.

It is also possible that an individual does have access to support, but is frustrated by communications problems with the staff persons on duty. So he or she tries this site as an alternative.

Other possibilities ??

Re: Customer Services
 

Thanks Jim,

for taking my question seriously.

I had the impression that the CFD companies are doing a serious job (just by looking at their webpages) and I was not sure where the problem was. But what you write makes sens. I guess this is happening with a lot of commercial softwares.

Re: Customer Services
 

(1). I really like to get into this general discussions, but I can't right now. (2).I am checking out this 3-D commercial code, and we have network and server problems today. I can only check this forum when the code is running. (3). Sure, it is the user's problem. There are free software everywhere. It is not the problem with the software. (4). I think it is perfectly all right to ask any questions here. And it is also all right not to answer any questions. (5). Recently, I have been interested in various kind of rollerball pens. And it is interesting to know that there is also a pen forum site on the Internet. There was a question asked about how to use a fountain pen also. (6). The questions asked here really were not that important. The real problem is in the Internet War. The netzero web site news said yesterday that China has invaded Taiwan's Internet sites because they considered Taiwan (Free China) is part of communist China. So, both sides have engaged in this serious Internet War. This is something you need to worry about from now on.

Re: Customer Services
 

I doubt if any of the CFD companies that support this site does so because this forum could give support for their codes. In fact, I even know that some vendors have instruced their employees not to provide support here - they want to remain in control of the user support since it provides important feedback, warrants the high prices they ask for their codes and also gives them better control of problematic customers - they avoid "bad press".

My experience from support from commercial vendors is also that it is usually very good. The major complaint I have about these vendors is that they often release beta or even alpha versions which are very buggy.

Another question is if it would be good to have a "support dialoge" between users here concerning commercial codes. It will of course take space and irritate some people, but it could also be valuable for many users of commercial codes since it can give an overview of common problems with different codes (and common solutions). I'm not sure what I think about this myself. Perhaps it's time to start a separate forum for discussions about commercial codes?

Re: Customer Services
 

The worst enemy of a commercial CFD vendor is a bad user. The problem is exacerbated when the bad user is too lazy to call the support desk yet capable of posting a support question to this forum. As already pointed out, the quality of support from all major commercial vendors is high . There really is no excuse for users in maintenance to post innane support questions here that certainly give the vendor a bad reputation. If the vendor has been selling cheap no-maintenance academic licenses that result in a whole range of support questions posted here then it serves the vendor right.

At the end of the day it is the business of business to make money. Commercial CFD is not divorced from this, it may have had academic roots but it is now thriving in a commercial environment. Respect this:)

Fred.

Re: Customer Services
 

We have an 'educational' CFX license and even with this license we get good support from their helpdesk. As they prefer e-mail, it usually takes a while before we get an answer but their answers always solved our problems.

I think one of the reasons for the answers Patrick mentioned, is that this support is easily accessible as e-mail and the internet generally is. It might be that they feel silly towards the software developer's "specialists".

Gert-Jan

Re: Customer Services
 

Sounds like you own Aavid stocks or something ;-) I see nothing wrong in users asking eachother about help, even if they could get the same or better help from the CFD code vendor. As a customer you are free to do whatever you want, even tell others that this and that code s*cks. I think most people who follow this forum will have the ability to sort out what is relevant and what is not anyway. The major concern I have is that the volume of these support related discussions can become very high and thus make other discussions difficult to follow. If this happens and if many people find that the support questions are irritating then we can start a separate forum for that - there seems to be a need for it soon.

Re: Customer Services
 

I agree with you, Jona, although it doesn't sound like an Aavid stock owner. I don't have a gut to call our client enemy.

Re: Customer Services
 

Errrrrrrrr? Client Enemy? Your parent company?

Re: Customer Services
 

I think there is a real need for a forum to discus commercial CFD code - and how they work. It is my own experience that supportdesks in general are good and fast - I always get a useable answer whenever I have a problem. But it is getting increasingly expensive to use the supportdesks.

I often find it necessary to make "workarounds" to get my models to work - and I actually use a lot of time reprogramming the CFX code through the Fortran routines to implement new physical descriptions. However, this saves a lot of time compared to building the model from the bottom up. It would be nice to have a forum to give and receive tips on how to get things working in these codes without getting harsh words in return.

So…. If it is possible to split this forum up in two parts : One for theoretical, practical and experimental CFD and one for application of commercial codes then it would be a good thing. It would remove most of the questions which some finds irritating and other find challenging.

Regards

Michael

Re: Customer Services
 

Good idea. Maybe though the commercial vendors who sponsor this site may want some low level of moderation, or maybe not.......

Re: Customer Services
 

(1). A company uses commercial CFD codes, because it does not want to develop its own CFD capabilities, that is to use computer simulation to solve thermo/fluid problems. (2). This is purely economy. (3). The use of commercial CFD codes was considered an intermediate solution to this money saving approach. (4). But even with this approach, many companies are sub-contracting out the CFD analysis part of work. So the company does not even have to worry about the technical support and license fee at all. (5). As a result, CFD becomes a consulting business again, as it should be right from the begining. This is because when a code is detached from the developer or the experienced engineer, it can no longer function by itself. (6). What the user company need is the solution to his problem, not the experience to use a particular commercial CFD code. The need for solving a real problem is always there, but the need to use a particular commercial CFD code is not. (7). A company with its own investment in CFD capability can survive, because they have the control over the employee. A company uses a commercial CFD code can not survive in the long run, because this is a short term solution only. ( This does not mean that a company with its own CFD capability will definitely survive in the market place of tomorrow.) (8).Since there are always companies willing to cut cost in in-house CFD development , the need for temporary CFD consultants is always there. And this is the real market for CFD today. That is a CFD consultant may need some handy CFD tool box to make a living. (9). As for a large company using commercial CFD codes, they normally realize the risk involved, and have several commercial CFD codes on their systems. These are the companies which have technical problems in the first place. So, when a large company is using a commercial CFD code, you have to be careful and ask why? Actually, these companies should have their own CFD development center in the first place. (10). For the CFD code vendors, I would strongly suggest that they move into consulting business. A code just like a PC, it will become obsolete quickly. (11). As for the CFD-online, I don't think it will have any impact at all even if it changes its format everyday. (12). The point is, it is impossible to make a code like a human being. So, you are trying to attach it to the user. In this way, you think it would become something like a human being. But, the first reaction from the user is the body will reject the foreign body violently first. (13). You think everybody like to use only MS software? No, it's because they have the control over the market. (14). In reality, it is a global war, a large-scale CFD war. It would be a miracle, it a company can survive purely based on the use of commercial CFD code. This is the insider's point of view. So, to support or not to support is itself not an issue.

Re: Customer Services
 

(1). I could not understand why "ANONYMOUS" was used on the network before. But now, I think, it is an excellant idea. (2). I am using free Yahoo e-mail, I am also using free netzero web server, so I can get on this free CFD-online. (3). It is important to learn how to free ourselves from the name, emotion and ... when surfing on Internet. (4). Things will work out smoothly when we use "ANONYMOUS USER", "ANONYMOUS VENDOR", "ANONYMOUS CODE", "ANONYMOUS METHOD",,,... (5). INTERNET was born FREE, and should remain FREE, regardless of whether one likes it or not.

Re: Customer Services
 

I think it is a good idea to split this discussion forum: Commercial code user groups, Test cases and validation, Solvers, Turbulence models, ...

Re: Customer Services
 

(1). The way this version of cfd-online is structured gives an impression that it is highly commercial. (2). From the job listing, one can see that experience in commercial codes are desirable. So, these are commercial codes users or vendors looking for engineers. (3). On every page, there is always a commercial code vendor's trade mark somewhere. (4). And I am sure that the webmaster also would like to have a good relationship with the commercial code vendors and sponsors. (5). It is then very difficult for the CFD readers not to think that it is a forum for the commercial codes users. (6). Since the technical questions normally requires some understanding of the user's problem, it will take time. And the best format is to have a technical support e-mail number listed here for each code vendor, so that a reader can forward his question to the vendor's support department. Whether it will be answered or not, it is totally depend on the user-vendor relationship because that is a business world. When you buy a product, there is always a number one can call when there is a need to do so. When I have problems with commercial code our people always says I have to call the vendor for answer because it is part of the purchase agreement. I normally demand the technical support through the phone right away until the question is answered. We don't have the patient for the e-mail. (7). It would be very hard to understand that a vendor would sell a high power tool ( or guns) to a student without proper training, support, or service. Can one give away free codes ( or guns) to student? Does the student user really understand the meaning of "AS IS" condition? (8). What you are really trying to say is you would like to gain back the non-commercial part from this web site which has too much commercial flavors already. This is the real world. When you step into it , you see the consequence. (9). My suggestion is it is a good idea to create one , a separate web site without any commercial flavor at all. (10). What I am saying is the reason why people come here to ask questions about commercial codes is because they think this web site is for the commercial codes. (otherwise, there will be a sign saying: private club, membership only.) For myself, I will support any CFD web site, commercial or non-commercial.

Re: Customer Services
 

There is one point you missed about companies deciding to rely on commercial software over in-house codes. When someone is hired to write and maintain an in-house code, it takes a while to write a program from scratch. But if that person leaves for a better oppurtunity or retirement, etc. it can take a long time for a new person to become familiar enough with the code to maintain, debug and modify it effectively. This also depends on the complexity of the code, how well the program was documented and how well the program was structured and written. I inherited a program (not CFD, but still relevant) that was almost finished, but so poorly structured and documented that I put it aside and rewrote my own. I have since left that company and they had to get someone else to maintain and expand it. Companies also have to worry about employees who may purposely not document their code for the sake of job security. It's sad but people have done things like this before. And an employee could always take a copy of the code he wrote along with him to his next job. The new employer has a written code and a person who understands it, the old one will need a couple of months to find and hire a new programmer and several more months (at least) for that new person to become familiar enough with the code to start getting good results.

It think your prediction about companies using more CFD consultants is right on the money. It allows companies to only pay for these services when they need them and get quick results. It's also advantageous to the CFD analysts. They don't have to spend endless hours in pointless meetings and deal with the internal politics of large corporations.

Re: Customer Services
 

(1). What you are saying is true. That is definitely related to the operation of a company. (2). If a company treats the employee as member of the big family, the employee probably will work on the company problem longer hours on his own. If a company also treat the employee as s partner, he knows that his year-end bonus and stock shares will depand on how he treat the company and his work. (3). On the other hand, if a company treat the employee as a computer slave, the company will have problems for a long time to go. This is especially the case when the company is having problems. (4). The same situation can happen to the commercial CFD vendors when the company change hand. But that is fairly easy to solve, as long as the programming work is a team work there will be several engineers involved at the same time. And through the daily communication, they should all become familiar with the code. So, there is a minimum critical mass for this to happen. If there is only one person familiar with the code, it is then up to the manager's intelligent decision as to whether a salary raise is more practical or the code is cheaper to keep. (5). In CFD field , one is dealing with the intellectual properties. So, there are different rules to handle it. There is no way to delete the program and logic from the employee's brain when he decides to join other company. Those are governed by the copyright law, patent laws and contract between the two parties. (That's why sometimes I said real working schemes are unlikely to end up in commercial codes. Why should he? Unless he is part of the company.)

Re: Customer Services
 

i agree with you. from my experience using commercial codes(no all CFD some FEA) most companies are extremely willing to help even do the analysis for customers. after all if you're paying $25000 or more for liscences the companies should not only wipe your ass but take a shit for you as well.

Re: Customer Services
 

uh oh i sense a tangent ; Danger Will Robinson tangent, tangent

Re: Customer Services
 

are youtelling me that you're paying big dollars for you code and then youhave to pay more for help desk support. i guess that's the new scam. they charge large $ for the code, make it hard to use, and fleece you for the help desk fees. tell them to bug off and get another code that'll give you help for free

Re: Customer Services
 

i disagree with you Tapio i think it's good the way it is. else it becomes like the journals in the engineering library. first you had only a few journals, say journal of fluid mechanics. now every little area of fluids has it's own journal so you have to subscribe to all so you don't miss anything and you have to publish in all or you may not get read by who you want to read it. i think the discussion is good for everybody. the commercial users get to read the theoretical discussion and the theoretical people get to see what can be done on the commercial side and everybody learns from and discusses with each other. if you don't want to read about large eddy simulation or flow of ketchup in gas turbines skip the thread.

Re: Customer Services
 

No I'm actually paying medium dollars for my CFD program(s). The thing is that I am working for a university and most CFD companies offer special discounts when the program is for non-commercial use. This is fair for several reasons:

1) We do not earn money on their product.

2) Their programs are mentioned in scientific journals, where it is customary to describe what program is used in order for other researchers to test the hypothesis presented in the article.

3) We train students through their education to use and understand CFD and thereby expand the market.

4) We often come in to contact with industry and are able to advice on the use of CFD in their company (also good and bad experiences with different CFD programs)

5) Through our research, new models are developed and published. The results can be used by the CFD companies to improve their own code (if they like).

So the companies get their money back through different channels. However, as we have academic licenses one CFD producer has limited our access to support, so we have to pay pr. hour. If this is fair is doubtful when taking the 5 point above into account but I will leave that to other to comment on. The consequence is that we have 3 CFD packages in use at the moment, so when one CFD producer starts changing the conditions to our disadvantage - we simply change CFD packages. It is not cheap to keep 3 CFD packages in the air - so all in all - we pay for it !!!.

Regards

Michael

Re: Customer Services
 

mcihael: it would seem to me that your providing a service to these CFD companies whose value is well in excess of the lower price they give you. you are promoting their code, expanding their market and help with code development and validation. in my opinion this is worth a lot. i don't know how much you're saving but take this example into account. i've heard of two impressive aerodynamics calculations using StarCD (which from my understanding is widely used in europe). both were published and reasonably well received. in these two cases the results were obtained by corporations not schools so you can assume they get economic benefit so they should pay full price for the code. however if it had been researchers from you school who'd done this there'd be no direct economic benefit (ie the school isn't making a profit) and StarCD gets good exposure for free to their target audience. if because of this StarCD sells even one full commercial liscence you would have made them more money than you saved by getting academic liscence. what i'm trying to say is that if your department is providing a cfd company with code development, training, and promotional services which help it to save money and sell more product you should at least be getting free help desk support. if you weren't doing this they would either have to provide these services themselves or pay other to do it.

Re: Customer Services
 

Such benefits to the commercial CFD vendor would be seen as 'intangible' by the Board or Sales and Marketing Depts. Becasue of this, and the fear of setting a precedence, the academic license will continue to be viewed as the 'backwards' cousin of the commercial license (and treated accordingly).

The benefit that is sometimes provided by good quality CFD studies in academia is always going to be outweighed by the mass of poor investigations conducted by novice users. Going back somewhat in this thread ..... 'The worst enemy of a commercial CFD vendor is a bad user' and boy, are there some bad users in academia (probably because they can't afford to pay for either good training or help desk support!)

Re: Customer Services
 

(1). When you have three commercial CFD codes, do you and your students have access to the source codes? (2). Do you get the same results from all three codes? How do you handle the situation when students obtained different results using different code? (3). Do you also advice industry to use three CFD codes at the same time? (4). When you developed a new model, do you offer the vendor a paper, a set of equations or a plug-in code? (5). When your model is incorporated into the commercial code, are you responsible for the user's results using your model? (6). How do you know that the model is incorporated in the code correctly? (7). After graduation, who is responsible for the training of your students, when a brand new version of the code is released (that is his knowledge about the old version becomes obsolete.)? (8). I am getting the feeling that the school is becoming a training center of the commercial codes.

Re: Customer Services
 

in response i have two points. (1)for the sales people to say this is lazy (although i agree that they'd say that since it cuts cost.) because undoubtedly they have a few MBAs in there who can do cost analyses and come up with good estimates/predictions of the benefit to their company in hard dollars. indeed the academaic users of these codes ought to do this analysis and present to the companies so they can get a fairer deal. after all engineers should be able to figure out how to do cost analyses as well. (2)you made the valid point that bad users are bad for the commercial cfd company as they make their code look bad. as such it'd seem to me that the cfd companies should do as much as possible to make their users (particularly the academic users who'll (hopefully) be their commercial users in the future better users. this is what the better FEA companies have done even to the point of giving free in house training to university users because they know that the well trained university user will be more satisfied with their code and well tend to use it when they get into the working world. the FEA companies should be the model for the whole commercial computational engineering community because they have been able to expand their market and be successful over the years. not more than fifteen years ago the FEA market was small only a few companies offered expensive hard to use codes which were only used by people (with advanced degrees) for critical applications which required high levels of precision (aerospace etc). now ther are more commercial fea codes which are orders of magnitude cheaper easier to use while not sacrificing accuracy and applicability (ie they're not cut rate) and even perform better. this is where the commercial cfd vendors must go if they want to get big and make piles of money (that's the purpose of business after all)

Re: Customer Services
 

(1). Sometime in the future, somewhere on the package, there is a line of fine print. (2). It says, "WARNING: users under age 18 has been determined bad users, thus the use of this commercial CFD code can be hazardous to your health." (3).It is an irony, that on the front of the package, there is also a line of print, it says " Our policy is: the customer is always right."

Commercial CFD Codes Forum
 

(1). After a week or so, thinking this commercial code support issue, I will state my personal feeling briefly here. (2). I have a strong belief that CFD is neither a code nor a computer. I think, CFD is a human activity which involves in the numerical solution of fluid dynamics problems in general, at some stage in the process, it requires the help of the computer. (3). In the past, the computer hardware companies used to involve in CFD heavily. And In many cases, the super-computer, the mini-supercomputer were all designed to solve CFD problems. And hundreds, and thousands of CFD related computer codes also have been developed and written by researchers and engineers in CFD field. (4). Since the issue of the support of the current commercial CFD codes are related to some specific commercial CFD codes, I think, it is a good idea to have a separate forum on Commercial CFD codes. (5). In this way, the questions unique to the specific commercial CFD code can be addressed. I think, this is a better approach because those questions asked specific to the operations of a commercial CFD code, in gereral is not CFD questions. CFD is not about selecting an option, setting a boundary condition, or reading a format file in a commercial CFD code. Those questions are purely related to the operation of a code. (6). I think, this is an important issue. Answering commercial CFD code questions, promoting commercial CFD codes should be treated in a special category. A forum on the applications of commercial CFD codes would be more appropriate in this case. (7). In this way, it also will take the pressure off from the readers who are interested in answering the posted questions, without worrying about being attack by a pro-CFD code user. (8). It is not healthy to continue on the current format.

Re: Customer Services
 

I will try to answer your questions:

1) For two of the codes there is access to the code through Fortran routines. It does not mean direct access to core code, but it is pretty much possible to re-program both CFD programs from the lowest levels - if you know what you are doing (and read the manual!). I use it for example to alter the rheology in multiphase flow, as the standard CFD programs do not have the facilities that I need.

2) There can be differences between codes due to different implementation and solution techniques. When I get at new software I always test it on standard hydraulic problems, where I know the answers. Students use the same software though their projects, so we do not - on a student level - spend much time on comparing different packages. (I don't think it is important).

3) I do not advice industry to use different packages. They usually have the money to buy the program, the training and support they need. I only try to analyse what need - the few companies I have been involved with - have and point in the direction where I think they will get the results they want. It is very informal and most times they have never thought of using CFD - so we get an interesting discussion. For my part I get to see different industry related problems, which I can use in the education.

4) No what I meant was that the result coming from the academic area is public domain. Every vendor can use it or not. If you look at the models implemented in the CFD programs, many of them heavily sited in the literature ( and thats why all CFD programs have many of the same models implemented). The CFD programs are rather conservative, when selecting what model should be implemented. There need to be a general acceptance of for example a turbulence model before it is offered as an option in a CFD program. In that sense you pay for the implementation of the model - not the model itself. I don't think there would be any commercial CFD software if it was not for the work done for example at the universities. BTW I think that in some academic licenses, the user are obliged to send a copy of an article if it is based on CFD program.

5) I do not take credit for any model and therefor no responsibility (see 4).

6) As a good engineer I test the model under different conditions, where I know the answer. If I cannot develop an analytical solution to my model, then I compare it to measurements.

7) I can only speak for myself. I do not train students in a specific program - I find it uninteresting. It is more interesting to teach the students to be critical to the code they have in their hands and develop skills for analysing and interpreting results. If they use a specific program the it is just a matter of reading the manual and learning how to get things set-up correctly. In my experience - if you know one program very well you can fairly easily change to another.

generally speaking I find that commercial CFD programs are launching pads for development. I don't want to spend 3 years getting a unstructured grid generator to work, when I know that this has been done many times by others. But if I can use a "open" CFD program to study the physics of what I'm working with, without spending lots of time programming, then it is great !!

Regards

Michael