Hy, I'm working now for about one year with gambit and with the version 1.3 I have a really good tool. Congratulations to the fluent-gambit-team. The acis-kernel works really good and you can use gambit nearly as a cad-system.

My wishes for the future

in the cad-tool:

-trim function. The "simulation" of "trim" with the included functions takes a long time.

-measurement: it should be possible to measure distances between points, angles,...

-in "create volume": sometimes a lot of vertices arise that make it impossible to mesh the volume

in the meshing-tool:

-good smoothing-tool. The number of my bad cells (skew > given value) always increases (!!) if I smooth a volume

-solid-body-independent meshing-tool, that meshes the volume (like tgrid) inside a given tri-surface-mesh or quad-surface-mesh

-tgrid-functionality of "modify node/ modify element", perhaps with a good gui

-possibility of merging different meshes with "merge nodes" with tolerance so that you realize: it is really merged (-->useful at periodic cases, where the "periodic elements" for example don't have 4x90 deg, but 4x89,95 deg

-modifying of given meshes "by hand": for example deleting a very bad quad and insert tris and the possibility of using such an improoved surface-mesh for further operations like cooper..

-boundary layer:

it works well in easy geometries but not in complicated ones. The alternative seems to be not to mesh with repect to a good y+. Any ideas, how you can always get a boundary-layer, even it takes a lot of time ?

view-functions:

- selection and view of only a part of the model with a rectangle, circle ..

- selection of single meshes (surface and volume) with a rectangle, circle ...

-selection of special elements (skew > xx, only tris, only hex..)

Thanks to the gambit-team

Jurek

also like to add something: split face option : It would be nice if you would be able to split to split a large face with several small faces all at once. This would be useful for creating geometries of perforated plates etc.

Hi Jurek,

that is indeed a very good idea. I am working with GAMBIT since 1.01 I think. A lot of things have been improved during the nearly 2 years. But there is still much to do. Although CAD-import now offers various possibilties (especially parasolid helps a lot), I still run in problems with geometry which differs from cylinders and cubes. This often leads to lot of repair work. Therefore sometimes I wish back the time when the toplogy was not completey fixed to the geometry...

So, here is my contribution, i.e. my wishes:

1. more group fucntionality like

- creating AND putting into group at the same time (e.g creating a volume which is at once in a group; edges vertices, included)

- addition / subtraction of groups

- removing members by just picking them on the screen

- selecting items by existing groups e.g. start surfaces for the cooper tool

2. Meshing:

- a cooper tool which allows to give the projection direction and cooper does nothing more than to project an existing mesh to a corresponding surface with creating cells i between with a given distance

- like Jurek already said: more possibilities to work directly on the grid (splitting of facets, merging facets...)

- get full access to tgrid functionality inside gambit

3. Selecting by polygon

4. Deleting virtual geometry by one step ( if you ever have virtul geometry you'll never get rid of it, there is still another face after deleting the old...)

5. An indicator for linked meshes

6. Highlighting and labeling in addition to the transcript message when problems occur with geometry

7. Measuring of distances, areas ... ( what I already asked scott. Gilmore 1 year ago on the German users's group meeting; he found it a good idea simple to program..)

8. shading and coloring by boundary conditions to really get an overview

Thanks to the GAMBIT team

Hy Volker,

some questions. 1. it seems you work a lot with groups. How do you use them ? I don't see the need up to now ..

3. what's "selecting by polygon" ?

5. perhaps by color or pattern

7. very important !!!!!!!

some small wishes:

-in the view-menue: make the right mouse-button work

-create face: the last choice (real/virtual) keeps selected. Please make a default to real. I sometimes had the problem of virtual faces that I did not want, but forgot to change to real.

Hi Jurek,

1.+3 groups and selecting by polygon

I primary use groups to keep the overview of geometry items.

E.g. imagine a field of pipes, let's say 70. The pipe-inlets shall be linked to the faces belonging to another volume. If the whole geometry is on it may be difficult to pick the faces without picking ones in the near and with to toggle the right one by the middle mouse button. The work is done much easier my switching off the whole geometry and switching on a group which contents only those faces. Or if you want to mesh only all of that 70 faces, then it makes the whole job easier if only those faces are displayed and can be selected by dragging an rectangle (with Shift and the left mouse button + dragging) around them. ==> This leads to "polygon picking" which means that instead of using a rectangle for selecting items all what is inside (or outside) an area limited by a free polygon (no regular figure) is selected. This helps, if e.g. the items which shall be selected, are not arranged symmetric to the coordinate axes.

Sometimes it happens that I want to keep the original geometry performing a unification or merging process. It is nice then to have the origial geometry in a separate group, again in order to keep the overview Beside switching off and on becomes much easier. This process of putting new geometry into a group is essential when virtual geomtry is created. Since the old real geometry disappears and once again the overview of geometry is lost. (Therefore one of my wishes is that durig a creation process the new geomtry is at once in a separate group). Or sometimes it happens that virtual geometry covering other geometry cannot be deleted. In order not to pick the wrong geometry items I put the "rubbish" into one group, due to keep ...you know

And imagine you would be able once in the future to have direct access to the nodes. It would be awful not to be able to limit the number of nodes you want to work on.

Hence I think groups become necessary and meaningful if the number of geometry or grid items is large. They help to reduce the displayed items, hence improve graphic performance and make it easier to select or pick, respectively.

I hope, that it is more clear now, why I use groups.

On behalf of Gambit team, I would like to thank you all for your detail and constructive feedback. We have noted your wishes, and will try to implement them as soon as we can. Many of these would be available in next release. Please contact your local Fluent Support Engineer for details of your specific request.

Regards,

Shyam

And if you have programmed that all, the next "let's talk about fluent" comes. There are still a lot of wishes.. ;-)

sorry, I meant: "let's talk about gambit".....