Sharc announced today that its Extreme Meshing software, Harpoon, now supports Windows 64 operating system.

Harpoon users typically create larger meshes and so the 2 GB RAM limitations of 32 bit Windows resulted in the need for multiple operating systems, one for smaller meshes and day to day use and another large memory machine for the bigger jobs.

To facilitate the installation on Windows machines Harpoon now includes a Windows installer for both the 32 and 64 bit platforms replacing the manual process and the need to create environment variables.

“With more and more companies moving to 64 bit Windows systems we felt the time was right to offer this functionality” Richard Bardwell CEO Sharc Ltd

The Windows 64 bit version of Harpoon is available free of charge to existing users. Trial versions are also available for interested parties.

Following Sharc’s interest in Windows and through its links with the University of Southampton (an Official Windows 2003 server beta tester) and the Smallpeice Trust, Harpoon and EnSight were used in the Computers in Engineering day which took place at Southampton University on the 10th – 13th of July 2006. This enabled students to build a Windows computer from scratch, mesh the geometry of a plane using Harpoon, solve the laminar flow using Fluent on Windows 2003 server and then visualise the results with CEI’s EnSight software.

The day was an unqualified success and students were able to see how accessible these leading edge technologies had become. More detailed information will be available in the coming weeks through the Microsoft Institute for High Performance Computing.

“Thanks to Sharc and CEI for their support during this event” Dr. Kenji Takeda Lecturer in Aeronautics University of Southampton