CD-adapco Brings Support to Simulation
With simulation software and computing power becoming increasingly adept at addressing today's industrial problems, one would think that engineers would be running out of puzzles to solve. On the contrary, CD-adapco president Steve MacDonald believes that while this has opened the door for simulating more complex phenomena, it also means that there are no more easy problems left for engineers to solve.
Today, CD-adapco celebrates the success of this year's STAR Global Conference 2013, held in Orlando, Florida. Gene Kranz, the famous NASA flight director who led the effort to save Apollo 13 presented the keynote for the event, where the issue of solving more and more complex problems in engineering came into the spotlight.
Helping to drive home the idea that CD-adapco is addressing this issue was STAR-CCM+ v8, the most recent update to the company's flagship simulation tool that will help engineers simulate entire systems, rather than individual components.
The changes to this software offering to which the company has drawn the most attention range from parts-based meshing and improved surface preparation from imported CAD geometries to performance upgrades such as reduced simulation time on high processor-count clusters. But the company has also made it clear that user support is a substantial pillar upon which this update rests.
The release comes with the company's first “User Experience Team,” whose aim is to assist simulation engineers in understanding any aspect of the software. STAR-CCM+ is the first of the four v8 products to include this feature.
This idea of expertise as a service is not new for CD-adapco. This past October they introduced the industry to “Steve,” a customer portal designed to bring engineering knowledge as a supplement to its software offerings.
“Steve” is more than just a web interface—he's more of a virtual personality, like Siri or Watson. But instead of offering hands-free technology of answering Jeopardy questions, Steve is here to help customers get to know their software better.
Within the portal, users are likely to find what they need to know through technical articles or short instructional videos. Steve can also help customers follow up on support tickets, request updates and prioritize support cases with human representatives.
However, CD-adapco has not let Steve supplant the need for human support engineers. In fact, the company has continued to encourage its customers to consult with members of the support team throughout their engineering analyses, as will be the case with v8's new User Experience Team.
So as STAR-CCM+ v8's simulations become more complex, an intelligent user portal will certainly come in handy. However, some problems will still need a human mind to help solve.
