Does anybody have experience of any of the STAR-CAD products?

If so, how did you find them: - ease of use, - results, - speed of analysis/meshing, - any other points.

Thanks

Alex

Alex,

STAR-CAD products are a cut down version of STAR run through the CAD GUI only. There is no direct access to the solver. The functionality is limited to straight forward heat and fluid simulations. No complex physics, unless the option to allow for specific functionality has finally been implemented.

On ease of use, your ten year old son could probably run the code.

Results depend on what you are simulating and how good or bad the mesh is. Meshing is automatic, so any small tricky features could be a problem, so get CD-adapco to show you it works on any such tricky bits first.

Speed is no different to the main code. If for example the STAR-CCM+ solver is hidden inside STAR-CAD than its speed on your box is expected to be the same at that code. As usual, the better the box on your desk the better the performance.

As with all CD-adapco products running on Windows requires every third command to be "SAVE."

STAR-CAD is good if you only want basic CFD on pretty simple geometries. However, STAR-CAD is a good way for developing business for CD-adapco because pretty soon you will probably push the limit of the code and need to upgrade to STAR-CCM+. If this happens have another 6K ready on your budget.

Make sure that STAR-CAD meets your needs now and in the near future first. Otherwise, consider STAR-CCM+ instead.

Regards Peter

Thanks, for the detailed reply.

I have just purchased STAR-CCM+ and recieved STAR-CAD along with it. Considering using STAR-CAD for initial engineering analyses, before more in-depth analysis using STAR-CCM+.

Literally installed them both 3 hours ago so still in VERY early stages.