Autodesk Alias

[#1]

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.

[#2]

Falcon is a good plug-in for Alias(and other softwares of Design pakage, great idea!!!), U need only to update it, I think, too heavy in CPU work for me...is not possible use GPU power?

Other point, flow simulation on simple animation of models. Ideal would be to have simulation of objects on Alias window in it's real status(simple surface, surface in animation, and so on), and only on active layer. At now all surfaces in layers(hiden too), are be insert in falcon for wind simulation and this is not good. But ok, I think U work on it so, good job and thks for this plug.

[#3]

Fantastic plug-in. I guess it will open a can of worms .. in a political sense.

Many a times I had to modify front fascia grills for air flow, multiple times .. it is a time consuming process with hundreds of surfaces involved. Surprisingly when testing such a grille (with the whole car) using project Falcon... there is hardly any flow through it .. I am sure that I am making some mistakes regrading the settings.

It is imperative that some sort of tutorials are needed, based on realistic scenarios. It will help designers uninitiated in aerodynamics, to effectively use this tool.

[#4]

Today I updated the Labs site to include a 32-bit installer in the download.

[#5]

Today I also added a help file that you can download from the Labs site.

[#6]

Hello,

i would have a question regarding the falcon plugin.

Is it working only with air or is it working also with other fluids?

Regards

Cédric

[#7]

Has project falcon expired or something aswell as some other user i know i cant activate the plugin although it says "The Alias software add-on will operate until August 31, 2012" any reason as to what has happened.

[#8]

There is a new installer that you can download where the technology preview does not expire until August 31, 2012.

http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/falcon/

[#9]

I would like to know would it be possible to use this software to test wind turbines?

[#10]

I'm interested in modeling transitions - e.g. a car passing a truck. is there a way to accomplish this?