Autodesk Simulation Mechanical and Multiphysics

[#1]

I have been trying to use CFD to model windflow over solar panels for my capstone senior design project. In order to do so, I need to provide simple senarios to prove that my calculations are accurate. One of these senarios is simple flow over a long solid cylinder. I am not sure what the best mesh settings are for this operation(I do have a basic understanding). Also, I do not fully understand how to use the external fluid volume that encapsulates the part. I've been working on this for over a week now to no avail. If anyone could provide advice for a beginner, it would be greatly appreciated. there seems to be little to no tutorials available specifically for CFD.

Thanks,

Nathan

[#2]

Refer to an 2D example from ASIM/MP AVE  (AVE-136 Flow past a Circular Cylinder at Re=40, 100 ) , here is the link for the model and AVE PDF manual

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=17249302

For the size of the enclosure, theoretically, the large size makes less unwanted wall effect to the interested objects; however, it needs the practical size for reasonable computation model size(depending mesh density as well). So the general suggestion is 5x of distance from top/bottom and left/right, 10x distance on downstream.  BTW, using symmetric BC on top/bottom will have less wall impact than full wall BC.