Released CAESES 4.1

FRIEND­SHIP SYSTEMS has released version 4.1 of its upfront modeling and opti­miza­tion software CAESES® and CAESES® Free. All details about new features, changes and bug fixes can be found in our changes log. 

Geometry Kernel and Triangulation

With version 4.1, we have a lot of great improve­ments in our geometry kernel. Many geometry oper­a­tions have been made robust for dif­fi­cult modeling tasks. In addition, the surface tri­an­gu­la­tion which is impor­tant for STL exports has been com­pletely reviewed as well.

New Export Format for Robust Automation

This is a high­light that has been on our list for a long time: The tetin (*.tin) file export for a tighter con­nec­tion with ANSYS ICEM CFD. For auto­mated processes our users had issues with using ICEM CFD in an auto­mated process. Pre­vi­ously, when you imported a CAESES® model into ICEM CFD using IGES or similar formats, the IDs of edges and faces were mixed up and not unique anymore. Our users needed to imple­ment incon­ve­nient workarounds to realize a robust auto­mated workflow. With the new *.tin export, the unique CAESES® IDs of edges and faces are directly trans­ferred to ICEM CFD, and the user can rely on them when setting up a meshing process. This is now 100% robust for automa­tion, for both struc­tured and unstruc­tured meshes. So here is a big thanks to our users for pushing and request­ing this feature! As a side note, we had another request from our users to offer a DXF export. As a result, version 4.1 now supports a rea­son­able subset of this format, which is typ­i­cally used to export 2D infor­ma­tion for drawings within tra­di­tional CAD systems. 

Better Surface Representations

We fixed several bugs that had rather large impacts on the overall per­for­mance of CAESES®. But not only the per­for­mance is better now, we have also improved internal geometry rep­re­sen­ta­tions: Perhaps you have not been aware of this detail so far, but pre­vi­ously the sweep surfaces approx­i­mated the involved curve sections. This had tech­ni­cal reasons and was based on our former geometry struc­tures. With version 4.1, we avoid approx­i­ma­tions in the sweep trans­for­ma­tion and for the sweep surface, so that the surface rep­re­sen­ta­tions are made of the exact curve sections. 

Shift Trans­for­ma­tions

For surface shift trans­for­ma­tions, the user can now control the approx­i­ma­tion quality through the image surface. This speeds up the entire process of applying shape changes, e.g. for deform­ing ship hull geome­tries. Another option that we have added is the pos­si­bil­ity to trans­form the under­ly­ing NURBS rep­re­sen­ta­tion (i.e. the control points, without rebuild­ing the surface). This has tremen­dous effects on the per­for­mance of such a trans­for­ma­tion and is suf­fi­cient for most situations. 

Blade Analysis

We also improved our blade analysis routine for con­vert­ing a ​“dead” pro­peller geometry into a smart para­met­ric model, check this post for more details. 

Update of Dakota Version

For users of our add-on advanced opti­miza­tion, we updated the Dakota toolkit to the latest version 6.3 and reviewed the pre-con­fig­ured methods. There is also a new template for readily using a single-objec­tive genetic algo­rithm. Once again, here is our changes log for more details. We rec­om­mend all our users to download and install this new version. We look forward to receiv­ing your feedback!