Is anyone aware of a rough price comparison for CFD software: initial price, upgrade price, support, etc... Doesn't have to be that current but hopefully including most of the leading suppliers.

Dear Andy, I Dont ve the comparision but as i understood ACRiCFD tools are economic and efficient . You can visit their web www.acricfd.com ==>store they have a general purpose tool 'ANSWER' and groundwater simulations' PORFLOW' which are reasonably priced. With regards chakri

You might want to search the cfd-online archives; this question is asked fairly often.

Generally the advice is given to check with the vendors of CFD analysis software; they have the best idea of what it takes to solve a particular problem on their products. You should be prepared to talk to each more than once, refining your questions as you learn more about the products. Evidently most of these firms will do a free demonstration problem for a serious shopper; that would be something similar to what you need.

As to cost, the answers suggest $10-20,000 (US) for the first year - if you have sufficient computing resources already in place. Then you add personnel costs, overhead, etc. Not an inexpensive game ...

Good luck.

Thanks for the response. I did have a bit of a google before posting the question but turned up little. I have not trawled CFD-Online yet which is a good idea.

The reason I want the information is not to buy commercial software (research group) but to have a reasonable idea of costs to industrial sponsors of using commercial products to shadow/continue sponsored work. I have negotiated in the past for software for academic purposes (irrelevant) but do not know if FLUENT, CFX, etc... charge 5k, 50k or 500k a year for their products to industry.

If any one can give a rough idea of price for, say, a 16-node cluster + 1 workstation as the datum I would be grateful.

Try to ask the vendor directly for the list price for the setting you want, that will give you an idea. I could guess the price would be say, 25.000 - 45.000€ a year. Anyway don't you need a commercial license for such activities, then you will get the price automatically ))