SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation Project Templates

If you frequently use SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation and have created many projects, it’s likely that you’ve duplicated a lot of effort over time – unless you use the project template feature. Templates are prevalent within SOLIDWORKS in drawings, sheet metal, routing, etc. Although they’ve existed in Flow Simulation for many releases, I confess that I haven’t made good use of them and have definitely repeated the same clicks within the project setup Wizard. That will change starting now!

The Wizard does a great job stepping through the project set up process in an organized way; my colleague, Robert Warren, explains the process of using it in his “How do I?” blog.  However, some of the selections are repeated in each project. Saving that information to a template will sometimes allow bypassing the Wizard to quickly generate new projects – using only a few mouse clicks in the process!

Creating a template:

The process of creating a template is simple. If you have a project that includes information you regularly use, select the Project pull down menu in the Flow Simulation Command Manager and pick “Create Template”.

Type a name for the template and select “save”.

To view or change the location for saved templates access the Flow Simulation Options window via the Tools pull down menu of the Command Manager. (Many other important settings can be found in the Options window; have a look around if you haven’t seen it before!)

Information that can be saved to a Flow Simulation template:

Project settings and results post-processing information can be included in the template.

• General Settings
  • Internal or external project type
  • Physical features (heat conduction, radiation, gravity, etc.)
  • Fluid/solid material selection
  • Initial conditions
• Calculation Control Options
  • Finishing conditions
  • Refinement, solving and saving settings
• Input data *
• Global Mesh
• Units
• Results *
  • Specific plots
  • Flow trajectories

* Note that some of the setup related to picking model faces in the input data and results sections will require editing if the template is used on a different model from which it was created.

Using templates:

Once you’ve saved a template, it’s easy to quickly create a new project with those settings by picking the “New” icon in the Flow Simulation Command Manager tab instead of using the Wizard. You’ll be prompted to name the project, select the configuration to use and select the desired template.

New project creation from saved template vs. cloned project:

Creating a new project using a saved template is great when:

• You don’t have any existing projects in the CAD file you are working on or…
• The new project is a different type (internal vs. external) than what already exists in the file.

Creating a new project using the clone project function works well when:

• You want to copy the project settings to another based on a different CAD configuration or…
• You need to make a few minor changes to an existing project setup.

I hope this information helps improve your speed and efficiency working with SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation. If you haven’t used the templates functionality yet, give it a try and see how this important feature can make you a better CFD analyst.

Kurt Kurtin
Sr. Product Manager, Simulation
Computer Aided Technology, Inc.