Project Falcon for Autodesk® Alias software is a wind tunnel simulator that seamlessly integrates with Alias allowing designers to interactively investigate the aerodynamic performance of their designs at any stage. Industrial designers can get intuitive simulation results for their designs in seconds with no specialist knowledge required. Simply launch Project Falcon and results appear immediately. Project Falcon makes use of a revolutionary new automatic meshing technology that can handle any geometry at any stage of design. Flow and wind pressure results update almost in real-time in response to changes in wind-direction and speed. These results can be used to improve design decision making much earlier in the process.
Understanding the aerodynamic behaviour of your design is critical whenever air flows over, around, or through a design. As “organic” surfacing becomes more prevalent in industrial design, so too does the opportunity to create designs that work in harmony with the wind to reduce costly aerodynamic drag.
http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/falcon/
Please try it and post your comments as a reply in this thread.
I have posted an update that improves functionality and extends the technology preview to March 15, 2013.
This is fantastic news. Thanks a lot Autodesk Labs; Falcon is a great tool.
IMHO the new UI is sweet.
Scott, must 3D objects have thickness? Is it possible to analyze 3D surfaces without thickness?
When I take de 3D+Drag option, it just skip entrance and return to standard 3D analysis.
Are there more detailed .pdf files about usage?
Any intention to the future for adding Lift analysis?
Thanks
Hi Scott,
I have downloaded the latest but cannot get it to run on my machine...
John Frater
You should see flow move around 3D surfaces with no thickness. If you're not seeing it, I'm curious to know what the geometry looks like.
Not picturing what you described with the 3D+Drag and 3D analysis. Have you tried "thickening" the surfaces in CAD just to see if it makes a difference?
The basic help documentation is now built into Falcon, accessible through the"i" icon at the top of the screen.
Thanks for the feedback on lift. Lift is not part of this update but has been discussed.
Hi John - your system is similar to many others that are running it successfully. Curious when you see the issue? Is it immediately on startup? Also, what is the name of the downloaded *.zip folder you used? Some very small tweaks were recently made so l'm curious if you have the latest.
Hi Hartogj, thanks for your anser!. Surfaces without thikness work fine at first glance but, at least at the first minutes of work, I see exactly the same colours at the same places in both sides (windward and leeward) of the sails. That shouldn't be correct, as leeward face of sails should have a bigger (negative) pressure on the forward part than the same forward part at the windward side, where pressure should be positive and lower (in abolute value).
The poblem of 3D+Drag depends on how lucky I feel: sometimes, after some minutes of 3D common work, it do enters 3D+Drag without problem, sometimes it don't.
Another question: I'm working with .obj format in Meters and it works fine, but there's no way to check for sizes, an 8m lenght boat looks smaller than the default 5m lenght car, so there must be something bad in scale, but I can't check for dimensions into Falcon. A simple correction before importing the .obj file could solve the problem, but I can't measure into Falcon to know what scale factor should I use.
Unfortunately, the system don't allow to save a file together with his configurations, otherwise I could attach the file for checking.
The folder name of the extracted files is ProjectFalcon5...
Thanks for the info klzsailing. That is a cool model. You can try using a greater mesh resolution but I'm not sure if you will be able to see the different shading on either side of that zero thickness 3D sail. For the time being probably best to stick with volumetric representation if that's what you are looking to visualize.
As for scaling, that is good feedback. For now one quick thing you can do to measure things is move the 2D slice through the model. For example, on the sample car model, you can position the slice on one side and view the position (~170in) and then drag it to the other side (dat~235in) and quickly figure that the model width is 65 inches, ie full scale for this car.
John - that should be the latest download. If it fails immediately on startup, might be worth updating the graphics driver. Another thing you might try is going to the Falcon installation folder and deleting the "settings.ini" file since that will start Falcon running from a clean slate with all defaults.
I see all 8 cores of my processor oscillation up and down, the Not Responding is not instant, it will take about 3-5 seconds for this to happen. I have tried deleting the settings.ini file with no luck. CPU usage hovering around the 40% mark.
Hey John - that CPU usage is normal but the stability issue is not. I've just sent you a message - let's connect offline to resolve this if you like.
Just an update for the benefit of others reading this thread. johnfrater's issue should be rare but if you happen to see similar behavior:
1) Change the Shader option to "0" in the "settings.ini" file in your Falcon installation folder:
[Settings]
Reset=0
Shader=0
UI=0
Velocity-X=10.000000
Velocity-Y=-0.000100
...
2) Start Falcon and see if that resolves the problem
3) Here on the forum let us know if you had the issue and if this resolution worked.
Hi,
I am a bit confused about the relationship of airflow direction and 2d slice direction in a given model; if they are not parallel, I assume the behavior as visualized in the slice still reflects airflow in that 2d section based on chosen wind speed and direction, however how is that useful? To ask the other way around- why can't the 2d slice be tilted / rotated freely, so that I could always make it correspond with the given wind direction and am looking at the "matched" slice I am most interested in!
Thanks & best wishes,
Max
maxdee, that's a good point. To partialy solve that, I just rotate the model before importing into Falcon. Not practical but can't figure another way by now. Anyway, you can't rotate the floor to accompany your model...
yea, rotating (unless you're using a horizontal 2d slice) is the only option I see, too...
On another note, I can reliably crash Falcon by e.g. modifying the volume box handles; and weird enough, changing model scale to another unti can also result in crashes despite the geometry itself not changing..
It is a lovely tool, though. I'd love to see it developed further; if the authors are interested, I could perhaps use it in one of my classes and give you some more feedback.
Thanks for the feedback maxdee. Yes, right now the 2D slices are at fixed orientations relative to the grid. For now, you would need to turn the CAD model to look at flow on 2D slice at a skewed angle.
Regarding the crashing issue, there were some updates implemented after the initial release in response to what some folks were seeing on their machines. The latest build was posted on 9/4 so might be worth checking to see if you have the latest.
Thanks for the good work with Falcon. I am happy that this software is evolving nicely. I will like to ask if there is a possibility in the near future to have the suggestions on metrics outlined before and the classical 2 axis plus moment coefficients, of course I am sure you can handle it because drag is already in. There will be nice to have some degree of control over variables relevant to cfd, i.e. of turbulence modelling control... for example. Batch modes to be able to run velocity vector angles.
I do not know for sure but the way the soft performs seems that it is LBM based, is it ?
Thanks.
Claud
Mac 8 core, 12gig, ATI 5870 1gvram