CFD Masterclass—from Zero to Hero

JAMES NEVILLE: All right, everybody. We'll probably go ahead and get rolling. We have a pretty packed 90 minutes here. It's a little ambitious, I'll admit. We're going to get a lot done, but we'll have a lot of fun doing. But welcome to our CFD Masterclass. We've got a lot of stuff to cover here today. My name is James Neville. I am a Senior Implementation Consultant on the Autodesk Consulting team. My primary background is CFD, but I dabble in all the stuff that we do at Autodesk. I've been with Autodesk for nine years, almost nine years. Prior to Autodesk, I worked at Blue Ridge Numerics, the makers of CF design. So the majority of my professional background has been with CFD, computational fluid dynamics. My co-presenter here, Dave Graves, I'll let him introduce himself.

DAVE GRAVES: Yeah, thanks James. So much like James, I came from Blue Ridge Numerics as well. So between the two of us, we probably have close to 15, 18 years with the product.

JAMES NEVILLE: Like 30.

DAVE GRAVES: 30, not quite 30. Yeah, so we're-- I currently work in our digital manufacturing group. I focus on our safety product today and our generative design product. Very excited you guys are here. Maybe did you have a poll in there? Just ask them their user level right now?

JAMES NEVILLE: Sure. Just a quick raise of hands, has anyone used Fusion before?

DAVE GRAVES: Awesome.

JAMES NEVILLE: There we go. Has anyone never used Fusion before? Is that--

DAVE GRAVES: OK.

JAMES NEVILLE: What about CFD? These are have have used CFD before. Cool. All right, so it's like 50-50, little less than 50-50. It's cool. We have a really good set of instructions for our examples that we're going to go through today. So if you guys have no experience whatsoever, it's fine. There is a sort of a cookbook that you'll be able to follow. And we should be able to keep the same pace. Like I said, we have a lot to cover in these 90 minutes. For some it's going to be fast. For others, it's going to be like really fast. So just bear with us. We got a lot of people to help out.

So we have two challenges. We're going to get right into it here. We'll actually be in software in about three or four minutes. So we'll do a lot less talking up here and a lot more helping you guys go through the exercises. Two challenges. First challenge, it's an electronics cooling model. Pretty basic design inside. There's a microprocessor. That's the big one sitting on the PCB. There's a bunch of smaller components that also generate heat. Connector inside that gives you some capacitors. And there is a fan that drives airflow through the electronic schooling model. Right, the goal is to have the lowest possible temperature on that microprocessor.

All right, so what we're going to do, is we're going to run that once. We're going to launch it in from Fusion. We're going to do a little bit of simplification in Fusion first. We will launch that model into CFD. We'll have it set up in CFD. And then we'll evaluate the baseline performance. That's where we're starting, right. And then your job for the challenge is going to be to build a new heat sink. So you'll be able to get creative, apply your CAD skills, or we;ll help you out, to essentially improve the performance of the product. And then we'll run that new design in CFD once again, and then compare them back to back.

All right, so we'll spend about an hour doing that, a little less than an hour. And then challenge number two is a flow control example. So we'll get away from heat transfer and just focus just purely on how water moves through that flow passage. So again, we're going to run it once from Fusion. Right, we'll launch into CFD. We'll set it up. We'll evaluate the baseline performance. We'll see how the water moves through that flow passage. And then you'll have the opportunity go back into Fusion and you have a couple of rules you need to follow, but you'll be able to optimize that flow path. And then we'll compare them afterwards. All right?

There are two prizes. They're sitting up here. So we're giving out two tumblers. All right, so the person with the lowest microprocessor temperature for Challenge One is going to get a tumbler. And the person with the lowest pressure drop through their flow passage for Challenge Two will also get one. All right? So good luck.

DAVE GRAVES: You want to talk about the rules? Or you want me to show it first?

JAMES NEVILLE: We'll do the rules for each during.

DAVE GRAVES: All right.

JAMES NEVILLE: Yeah.

DAVE GRAVES: So just a couple of other things too. We have some people in the back. If you guys get stuck, just raise your hand, they'll either grab us or they'll be at Lancer, especially when it comes to Fusion. But the whole goal is, I think one thing James and I are passionate about CFD is the idea to innovate and try a lot of different things. So hopefully we can run two or three different heat sinks if we have time, right? But that's the idea.

JAMES NEVILLE: If we have time.

DAVE GRAVES: Kind of be creative. So just to show you if you're not familiar with Fusion. In Fusion there is a starting design. Thanks, James.

JAMES NEVILLE: You're welcome.

DAVE GRAVES: And you go into the simulation workspace. Just to make sure everyone's aware of it, we have this whole set of tools that help you kind of prep the model for simulation. Today, if you're not familiar with CFD, if you get the model more simulation ready, it's a lot more efficient, you can get results quicker. So a couple of things you're going to go through, one of them is called just replace with primitives. So as an example, I have this header here with a lot of different pins, but what I can do is basically choose it and it replaces it with a simple prismatic part. Same thing with some of these other chips. So I can do this.

This is going to make this a lot more efficient with you as far as running this simulation. So we can set this up, we just replace a few more here. Then, when you're ready, the basic process-- and it's all detailed out very well in the documentation that James has put together for you guys, but once you simplify this, make sure you turn the housing back on. Right? Just a little trick. Sometimes you need to click to simplify a surface bar for the tools-- bar to become available. But once that's available, then you should see the CFD icon the launch that.

JAMES NEVILLE: You guys don't need to follow along in real time.

DAVE GRAVES: Yeah. We're going to go through this real quick.

JAMES NEVILLE: Yeah. Couple of minutes.

DAVE GRAVES: Yeah. Let's put this on the desktop. And then, when you launch this, if you haven't seen CFD, it's going to come in. And we've made this process, hopefully as simple as possible to start getting results, right? Come on, CFD.

Take a second to launch, but a couple of things we've done. How many people have used rules on parts with our safety product before? Awesome. We have a bunch of rules set up to make that easier. But the basic process is, you're going to work left to right. We've actually pre-assigned a lot of the things for you. As soon as this comes up. And again, it's all documented out, but the first thing I'm going to do is

I'm going to go into the rules, and we're going to import the rules. They're going to be in the Data Sets folder. So if you go to Data Sets all the way down to Master Class in the Electronics folder, there's a bunch of rules. So you can basically select them all and apply them. Probably need to make everything air first, James?

JAMES NEVILLE: It's the instructions, Dave.

DAVE GRAVES: Yeah.

There we go. Try this again. And if you notice, it goes ahead and assigns all the materials for you.

And then, all you have to do is go to boundary conditions. And we're setting this up with an ambient temperature, but if you look here, we have materials, we have heat loads. Basically, these circular inlets are going to be both a zero gauge pressure, so they're open to atmosphere. So we're going to run this. Everyone run the same thing. It's important we set this up the same so we can have a nice comparison, but we're going to go with an ambient of 20 degrees Celsius.

Right. And then we're going to take all the default mesh settings, all the default settings that are in here, we're going to turn on heat transfer. And how many iterations, James?

JAMES NEVILLE: 200.

DAVE GRAVES: 200. And one thing you want to do before you run this is set everything up, make a clone of this. And the reason we can do this is so you can get your second design faster. You don't have to wait for the first one to be done. And then, basically we're ready to run this. So that's a real high level of how this is going to work. Do you want to talk about the rules, James?

JAMES NEVILLE: I do. Switch back over? OK. So just for reference, I don't know if anyone is--

DAVE GRAVES: Is it coming up yet?

JAMES NEVILLE: There we go. Give it a second. Let's go. I don't know if anyone has done a lab yet here. Probably not, since the sessions just started. But the data sets, there's a shortcut to the data sets on your desktop. So in each one of these images, there's like a data set shortcut right there on the desktop. And then the data set is IM323311, CFD Master Class. There's a bunch in there, but it's in the IM section. Pretty easy to find. So this says CFD Master Class on it. Yep.

AUDIENCE: Can you share them afterwards?

JAMES NEVILLE: Sorry?

AUDIENCE: Will you share them with us?

JAMES NEVILLE: Can we share them? Absolutely.

DAVE GRAVES: Yeah.

JAMES NEVILLE: These are homegrown, so we can share them up. So with that said, let's get started with part 1. So the instructions for each one of these challenges is in that Data Set folder. OK? The Fusion files that you will be opening for both challenge 1 and challenge 2 are already in fusions. You should see them in your data panel on the left-hand side.

DAVE GRAVES: Yeah. If not, let us know.

JAMES NEVILLE: If they're not, yeah, let us know right away. We will come help you out. So instructions for Electronics Cooling Challenge part 1 are in the Data Set folder. So if you just go and navigate to your desktop, Data Sets, IM323311, should be Electronics Cooling AU. Maybe there's a PDF file in there. Go ahead and pop that opens. It's got some pretty exhaustive instructions. It's like 30 pages. Don't-- there's a lot of pictures, OK? There's a lot of pictures. Try to cover all bases here. So with that said--

DAVE GRAVES: Did you have rules about the heat sink spacing?

JAMES NEVILLE: Yeah, but that's for part two, so not yet. We'll get there.

DAVE GRAVES: OK. So step one is get this model running, right?

JAMES NEVILLE: Yep. So what we're going to do, we're going to open up the Electronics Cooling AU model in Fusion and we're going to run through the instructions, and basically set it up and solve it in CFD. Sound good? Question in the back?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JAMES NEVILLE: If you need help, raise your hand immediately. Because like I said, time is a little tight. I'm going to set a timer right now for 25 minutes. We will be around to help.

When you guys are replacing the primitives for, say, like the little chips on the board, a lot of them are similar. You'll notice there's like four in a row. They're all at the same. Or two in a-- like a two-by-two pattern that looks the same, or three in a row. You only need to select one of the similar components and then hit Simplify, and it will grab all the other ones.

So just one note real quick. If everyone can get their eyes up on me just one-- I've seen a couple of questions here to launch the model into Fusion from CFD it's in the tools ribbon in the simplify simulation workspace by default you won't see a Tools ribbon it's like a UI glitch, so you need to click like either Simplify Solid or Simplify Surface. I'll show you where that is here.

So on-screen, once you get to the launch phase, it's located in this Tools folder, which you might not see by default. If you just click one of these two at the top, Tools will pop up like magic. So just a warning. It's an Easter egg. Yeah. It's like a-- we're trying to make it as hard as possible.

This is a time check. We have 15 minutes left on this section, so we want to start launching in the next few minutes, launching into CFD in the next few minutes. When you launch into CFD from Fusion, make sure all of the parts are visible. If the housing is not visible or any other parts are not visible in Fusion, they will not come into CFD, so make sure they're all visible when you launch. [INAUDIBLE] in the eyeball icon on the left.

They're looking at like a solid blue or a solid box of results instead of what we're supposed to be looking at. Just simply go to the View tab. So that-- good. So I can see what it looks like. If you go to the View ribbon, you'll see Say View, Apply View, Visual Style in the upper left. Change that visual style to Outline. You'll no longer be looking at a box. You'll be looking at the plane that is created by the View Setting file.

So notice that a lot of folks have simulations that are, I don't know, 30 to 50, maybe 100 iterations in. It is going to run until 200. In the instructions, the cloning step, where you clone design one to make a design two in CFD happen-- you can only do that after the solve is done. So if we're all running right now, we can go ahead and go back into Fusion and start doing like challenge 1 part 2. OK? So there's a-- like the next page in the PDF, you'll see challenge 1--

DAVE GRAVES: Can I show that process?

JAMES NEVILLE: Part 2. Yeah.

DAVE GRAVES: Yeah. So if you aren't familiar with CFD and the Decision Center Design, let me show you how that works. So in this model, I have the first one, and then I did a clone up here, right? So I have a heat sink, I want to change it. So in Fusion, I can kind of go back in here. Who knows, maybe I just want to-- is this actually coming up?

JAMES NEVILLE: I think I switched the screens. Thank you.

DAVE GRAVES: Yeah. So in FUsion is an example if I want to do something with these heat sinks. Maybe I want to try some uneven fins, whatever. I can do whatever change I want to do in Fusion. And then, so when I ran this before, I ran the second design, and this is the one I cloned, so this one is the same one, just not run.

What I do-- this is where it gets super easy. What I do is when I launch the CFD application again, instead of creating a new study or doing a study path, I click Update Design, and I'm going to choose-- this is the one that I clone. So I'm going to-- the original, I clicked Update design. It doesn't let me do the bottom. I do update design and you can see what happens in just a second.

But what it does is it takes all your settings. Any minute now. And so now, if I kind of go through here, now I got my new heat sink. I can just say, solve and run this again. So the idea, you can clone other ones and then do these placeholders ideas. You can try a lot of different ideas quickly. So that's a high level, the clone process. So if you're running something, think about a change in Fusion, start tweaking that heat sink.

JAMES NEVILLE: Just as an FYI, again, if the simulation is running and you haven't cloned already, which you probably haven't, per my instructions-- Dave was right. I should have swapped them-- then don't worry about it. You can clone after we do some work in Fusion to make a new heat sink. OK?

So I've got a slide up here for the second part of the cooling challenge. Just a word here. So what we're going to do is we're going to go back into Fusion, we're going to make modifications to the heat sink, like Dave just showed you. You can use the existing heat sink in there and push and pull and do some stuff to it. You can create your own. Whatever you want. OK? We'll probably have about-- so we have 25 minutes here to see. We probably have about like 10 minutes. 10, 12, 15 minutes to do Fusion work on your heat sink. So get as creative as you want. This is where you're going to earn your tumbler here.

So there are rules for the heat sink. You can see them in the upper right hand corner. The reason why we have the rules in there is to eliminate like excessively long runtimes, trying to get simulations that run in a reasonable amount of time here. So if you're going to make some heat sink fins or pin fins or something like that, keep them at a minimum thickness of half a millimeter, 0.5 millimeters. OK? Keep the spacing between any elements of your heat sink at least one millimeter. And your heat sink cannot be within 1 millimeter of any of the other components on the board. All right? Naturally, it's going to touch your microprocessor, but keep it one millimeter away from everything else. Try to avoid like really thin gaps for mashing problems and stuff.

DAVE GRAVES: We can go up, we can go wider, we can go--

JAMES NEVILLE: Yep, get creative. Get creative.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JAMES NEVILLE: Simplify space. Yep. So when you're back in Fusion, stay in that simplified space. It's cool. It's cool. I wouldn't expect you to miss me.

[LAUGHTER]

Yeah. To reiterate. Back in Fusion, you want to stay in the simulation workspace. So directly in the model that you launched in. That's where we're going to be working.

So we got about 15 minutes left for challenge 1, part 2. Knowing that it takes about seven to eight minutes to run the simulation, you probably have about five more minutes in Fusion before you guys need to start launching into your clone CFD study.

Your original simulations in CFD are probably done now, if you want to go ahead and clone those original designs, because you need to have a clone design to push your new Fusion design into. Those that are trecking along with Electronics Cooling Challenge part 2, now's the time to solve if you've got a design that's ready to go from Fusion.

In the interest of time, we got 30 minutes left, which is the exact amount of time that we need for challenge 2. I know that-- now, challenge one was a little more complex than challenge 2, so you have a couple options here. We are going to start challenge 2 here in a second. If you want to stay with challenge 1, totally fine. I know a lot of people are still doing their heat sinks and everything. That's totally cool.

So you can either continue a challenge 1 and take the next 30 minutes to really get that thing right and we'll walk around and will help you. Or you can sort of pause that and go back into Fusion and start working on challenge 2. Challenge 2 is a little bit faster to run. OK? We have obviously less time too. So let me go and get a slide here for challenge 2. This is optional. Optional, but there is another tumbler, so keep that in mind.

So here's challenge 2. It's a flow control part. Again, the data set is in your data panel. All right? And we're not doing any simplification on this one in Fusion. We're launching directly into CFD and setting it up. Again, the instructions are laid out in a PDF if in the data set folder. If you follow them verbatim for this one, it should go really well for you.

So they're available. So we're going to go and start challenge 1 part 2 right now. We have 30 minutes left. Again, this is optional. If you want to stick with challenge 1 and say with the heat sink, that's totally cool.

So we're going to go ahead and start to wrap up here. We got about two minutes left. I apologize for running out of time on challenge 2, but what we're going to do since we had a number of folks, the majority of folks focused on electronics cooling, the second part of the second challenge. We're going to give out for the top two best performing heat sinks. And we have a-- I don't hear your name, if you want to toss your name out there.

AUDIENCE: Brian.

JAMES NEVILLE: Brian from--

AUDIENCE: Dallas, Texas.

JAMES NEVILLE: From your company.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JAMES NEVILLE: Texas Instruments. Perfect. So Brian from Texas Instruments had a 65, which is really good. And I think the original design was something around like 99 degrees. So by like even just slight modifications to that heat sink, we're able to like drive it from almost like melting temperature on a juncture temperature down in like the mid 60s. And your name and--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JAMES NEVILLE: From? Perfect. So Chava did a 66. So round of applause for Brian and Chava.

[APPLAUSE]

So thanks again. And I have a-- again, I apologize for running out of time here. This is a little ambitious for what we're trying here, but I appreciate everyone's hard work, and hopefully you had a good time. I'm going to turn it over to Heath Houghton here for a second. I will play it for you.

[BACKGROUND CONVERSATIONS]

HEATH HOUGHTON: Yeah. OK. I'm good. So you did a whole bunch of modifications to run that heat sink, the example, more effectively. We're actually working on technology that's going to be embedded inside of Fusion to where you don't have to make any modifications to the geometry. It's not out yet, but what we want to do is if anybody's interested in seeing it, it's very specific to electronics cooling. It's not for all-- everything that CFD can do. It's very specific to electronics cooling.

But an optimized workflow where what you see is what you get on the geometry, don't make any modifications that cause your workday to become longer just doing CAD, you work on the manufacturing model. We're real excited to let anybody who wants to take a test run. I'm going to fast forward to this. This is just kind of showing the workflow. Basically, super simple, add heat loads. We have all these other workflows that we're doing to integrate with our electronics design and PCB design technologies that we're going to be pushing into Fusion. But yeah.

So we're super excited. I'm going to fast forward through this, because this is just showing some of the cool visuals and all that kind of stuff. But we're really happy to let anybody take a test drive. We have this QR code where you can sign up to schedule some time, 30 minutes, take it for a spin, test drive it, and we just like to get people's feedback.

So we'll be doing a tech preview later in the calendar year. So we want to get feedback before we go to that tech preview. And anybody who wants to take that scan sign up for a time slot, we're really excited to show people.

JAMES NEVILLE: Thanks everybody. Round of applause for everyone's efforts. Appreciate it.

[APPLAUSE]

[BACKGROUND CONVERSATIONS]

HEATH HOUGHTON: Good job, guys.