The term “Big Data” gets bandied about a lot these days, mainly in the context of the tsunami of data being generated by increased computing power and new devices – smart phones, iPads, video on demand, etc. In business, the focus is now shifting to the analysis of all that data, in order to be more competitive and profitable.
For those of us in the engineering persuasion, simulation data management has become crucial to improving engineering productivity, improving product quality, and lowering the cost of manufacturing.
In an earlier blog post we discussed Dr. Scott Imlay’s thoughts from the Supercomputing Conference held late last year in Seattle. Scott was impressed with the coming changes from the availability of supercomputing power and the advent of the cloud. Soon engineers will be able to run significantly more simulations at much greater speeds. This will enable them to run and compare complex “what if “ scenarios, in near real time, from their desktops.
Such enhanced computing power and software advances will eventually make simulation data management almost invisible to the engineer, the bulk of it happening in the background.
Dr. Scott Imlay points out: “That changes the game for engineers. It makes it so much easier to really come up with good designs, and it also opens up the door for you to deepen your level of understanding because you can now ask a lot of other questions, i.e. explore alternatives that were never possible to investigate before, because of time and budget limitations. But now it it’s possible.”
Along with this computing power and the ability to run more simulations, comes a tsunami of simulation data that needs to be managed. Right now, we’re hearing that engineers cannot analyze all the data generated from their simulations. Engineers don’t like this because they are afraid they may miss something important. But, until now, their software wasn’t capable of organizing and managing all the data.
If you’re like a lot of engineers, you may find yourself struggling with a hodgepodge of data generated by different simulation tools. You may also be spending a lot of time on non-analytical operations like writing scripts to collect, convert, combine, and view the data. This is time that would be better spent on analysis.
A simulation data management tool that just might change the way you work
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a simulation data management tool that automatically collected, converted, combined, and visualized large amounts of simulation data? Wouldn’t it be nice to quickly and easily manipulate both the metadata and the detail data? Wouldn’t it be nice to quickly visualize and compare the data in a variety of graphical formats? Wouldn’t it be nice to have more time to focus on analysis and design?
Engineers bring real value to the table when they can stay focused on analysis and design. At Tecplot, Inc, we create software that gives engineers the tools they need to organize, manage, and visualize their CFD simulation data results.
Tecplot Chorus is CFD simulation analytics management software for engineers and scientists who need to quickly discover trends and anomalies in mulitiple CFD studies, and simultaneously gain insights into the underlying, fluid-dynamic phenomena that cause these variations. Tecplot Chorus helps engineers deliver innovative designs more quickly by speeding up the discovery and understanding of the results, and underlying physics across many simulation cases.