Just heard that yesterday Ansys bought ICEM CFD Engineering. Interesting development - see http://www.icemcfd.com/messages/ansys.htm for further info.

Ansys is also tied in with n-code a division of the AEA software i.e. CFX as well

Eh, correct me if I'm wrong, but nCode hasn't got anything to do with CFX aside from the AEA ownership, right? nCode doesn't have any CFD codes, do they? Are you saying that the Ansys nCode alliance will give them access to CFX?

(1). From the user's point of view, I think, once the hardware product is designed and analyzed, it is unlikely that general flow field analysis will be carried out on the routine basis . The same is true for the stress analysis. (2). For routine design and analysis, the simplified in-house codes are used, instead of the general commercial cfd codes to save time. (3). So, the use of the commercial cfd codes will be limited to the new problems when the in-house codes can no longer handle it. (4). From my personal experience with commercial cfd codes in the last few years, I would say that the general commercial codes and related mesh generation codes can handle complex geometry problems, but, the need to do such analysis and the willingness for a company to spend money in doing such cfd analysis, is quite limited in this Internet age. And even in this world leading company, the commercial cfd codes licenses are still quite limited and only a few are available (icem, fluent, tascflow). (5). I would say that commercial cfd codes have reach a point where real world problems can be solved. But unless, the market size grows continuously (which is difficult from my point of view and because of time consuming nature of the 3-D analysis), it is hard to develop new products or even to improve the existing one with limited resources.

They'll want a solver if they want to take on Fluent (ignoring Flotran).

Maybe they wanted Fluent but maybe it was too pricey so they settled for ICEM + 'one other'.

ICEM sit on a lot of money, smaller companies beware.

CD may be vulnerable enough.

Fred.

Eh? I thought CD was a private company.

Vulnerable is the wrong word.

What about willing? Nah.

Eager? Nah.

Troubled? Nah.

I dunno. What with the recent problems they've been having it makes them a more likely candidate.

Interesting analysis. So the best way for CFD engineers becoming millionairs is to develop a good code and sell it!

I think Ansys tried to buy CD in 1998 with a huge amount of money, but was rejected by CD. Ansys would really wanted to acquire a good CFD code to expand its business.

By the way, the information I got from CD is that it has been doing extremely well marketwise and its annual turnover as a group is very close to that of Fluent. Do you know what problems they have?

Yep, financially I think they're OK. I've heard there are other personell type problems though that in this litigious world we live in I would not like to repeat here