I saw this announcement on the Simmetrix web site http://www.simmetrix.com/general/news/Fluent.html. I think Symmetrix are the ones who provide some of the stuff for CFDesign. Nothing on the Fluent news pages about this. Does anyone think Fluent are planning on releasing a competitor to CFDesign? Do you think they would go after this CAD type CFD novice market? Who here considers CAD integration an important issue in their CFD work?

That's very interesting. I wonder what they intend to use it for - Fluent has so many different market segments that it might well be for some special niche, like for example their electronics cooling package IcePak.

Anyway, Fluent has already released something which I think is intended to compete with CFDesign and other CAD-integrated CFD softwares. It is called FloWizard - see http://fluent.com/software/flowizard/index.htm AFAIK this is based on their gambit technology using ACIS as CAD geometry kernel.

In the long term I think that very good integration with CAD systems, future knowledge-based engineering tools and other disciplines like structural analysis etc. is a must for all genereal purpose CFD codes. I think that we will see a wave of consolidation in the CAE market over the next 10 year with new constellations being formed between CAD, FEM and CFD companies. Ansys aquisition of CFX is a start which will force others to go the same route.