Talking CFD

Today is the first episode with 2 guests — Darrin Stephens & Chris Sideroff — business partners in Applied CCM, based in Australia & Canada respectively.

Whilst Applied CCM have several CFD-related activities, this interview is essentially all about Caelus, their CFD software derived from OpenFOAM®. I really wanted to take this opportunity to dig into the whys & wherefores of Caelus, including:

• what makes Caelus different to OpenFOAM, both in terms of features & philosophy;

• why forks/derivatives detract from their parent open-source project & what they signify;

• what “industrially-hardened” means in a CFD context & why Red Hat Linux was a source of inspiration;

• why they have "a thing" about validation;

Shownotes

Applied CCM — http://www.appliedccm.com/

Caelus — https://www.caelus-cml.com/

In this episode I’m joined by Franjo Juretić, one of the founders of Creative Fields & the primary developer behind their CFD meshing toolkit - cfMesh.

Franjo & I discuss how a part-time project, that would only take a couple months to finish, turned into a 13+ year journey. Along the way we cover:

* how they use a freely-available, open-source product — cfMesh — to increase brand awareness & feed into their commercial offerings;

* how cfMesh fits into the OpenFOAM landscape & why it’s more than just an OpenFOAM mesher;

* why the problem of creating meshes for CFD will probably never be completely solved (& that’s why he enjoys it so much);

* the benefits of being a small company & building direct relationships with your customers;

Links

http://cfmesh.com/ – For more information on cfMesh, cfMesh Pro & cfFlow

https://sourceforge.net/projects/cfmesh/ – the cfMesh code repository on sourceforge

https://twitter.com/CFieldsHR – Follow Creative Fields on Twitter

In this episode I’m talking with Nicolas Tonello of Renuda about running a successful CFD consultancy / development / training business. We also open the box on Code_Saturne - an open-source CFD software that you may not know too much about. Nicolas & I chat about:

• why being independent is so important to them & how it benefits their clients;

• how they balance their consulting, development & training activities;

• how CFD can be much more than just an R&D tool;

• what is Code_Saturne & why aren’t more people using it?

• whether an OpenFOAM user would feel at home in Code_Saturne & some of the compelling reasons to switch;

• a nugget of advice for anyone thinking of starting their own CFD consultancy;

Links

• http://www.renuda.com/ – Renuda Website

• http://code-saturne.org/ – Code_Saturne

Today I’m talking with Kelly Senecal, one of the founding team behind Convergent Science. He tells me about how the days spent hand-crafting meshes led to them to develop CONVERGE CFD - a CFD package which automagically handles meshing for you.

Kelly & I discuss:​

• how they get along fine without a company president;

• how CONVERGE was almost open-source & how they're pioneering a hybrid (open & closed source) model with their take on user-defined functions;

• why there's more to CONVERGE than just automated meshing;

• how they compete in the marketplace especially when the sales process involves displacing a-n-other code;

• a nugget of advice for those just starting out & worried about competing with the bigger players in their market;

LINKS

• CONVERGE CFD – https://convergecfd.com/

• CONVERGE CFD on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/user/convergecfd

Talking CFD Season 02 is almost here - 10 more interviews with the people behind some of today's most interesting CFD businesses & a couple of new things to watch out for:

Check out:

• http://www.talkingcfd.com/social – for the new live video CFD social

• http://www.talkingcfd.com/fb – for the new listener Facebook group

It’s the final episode of the season & I'm joined by almost the full cast of interviewees for an hour long Q&A session, originally broadcast live on YouTube.

Our expert panel comprised Wolfgang Gentzsch (UberCloud), Patrick Hanley (Hanley Innovations), John Chawner (Pointwise), Haysam Telib (Optimad), Fred Mendonça (OpenCFD), Karim Fahssis (MeteoPole) & our sales coach Jeff Waters.

The sound quality isn’t up to standard, but hopefully the content makes up for it somewhat. We touched on:

• emerging technologies that could benefit CFD in the near future;

• the “democratisation of CAE”;

• the trends in outsourcing CFD groups in industry;

• whether a CFD developer needs a computer science/engineering degree;

• whether CFD will play a big role in healthcare & what other sectors could CFD benefit right now;

• whether recent Artificial Intelligence/Deep Learning developments (AlphaGo) have any application in CFD;

•what CFD businesses the panelists might start, if they had to start again right now;

### Links

Replay via YouTube - https://youtu.be/lzI-BpIlEZA

As this is the last 1-to-1 interview episode of the season, I thought I'd try something a little different. This time I’m not speaking to a company founder, I’m speaking to a domain expert about a business essential that we could all do with being a bit better at - sales.

I take 30mins and get tactical with CAE sales expert (& podcast host) Jeff Waters about why engineers might not be that great at sales & what we can do about it, including:

• how introverts can learn to become great salespeople;

• why you shouldn’t just “show up & throw up” when you meet a lead;

• why it’s important to listen for (& then use) prospects internal language & code-names;

• why you always need a next step;

• and why LinkedIn is your friend.

### Links

Life Upfront - http://lifeupfront.com - Jeff's CAE blog & podcast

In this episode I'm joined by Stefan Harries, one of the co-founders of Friendship Systems, the team behind CAESES, a multi-faceted software package enabling parametric shape optimisation for CFD. Stefan & I discuss:

• whether parametric shape optimisation will ever become mainstream in CFD;

• why a free version is just one part of a multi-pronged customer acquisition strategy;

• how paying attention to your customers can lead to entirely new use cases for your product;

• what you need to do to get a Mac version of CAESES;

### Links

CAESES – https://www.caeses.com/

In today's episode I had the opportunity to talk to Karim Fahssis - an MIT awarded innovator, a bicycle adventurer and the co-founder of multiple businesses in the CFD space. We cover some ground, mainly around CFD in the wind power industry, but also around doing business in Asia:

• how maintaining a consultancy practice can give you great insight into how to improve your product offerings;

• why taking CFD outside the *normal* design/development cycle & getting closer to the money can produce great results;

• why having a laser focus is essential to making your offerings work;

• why, if you want to do business in China, you shouldn't expect to be able to do it all remotely;

### Links

MeteoPole - http://www.meteopole.com/

Zephy-Science - http://www.zephy-science.com/

Zephy Cloud - http://www.zephycloud.com/

Today I’m joined by Fred Mendonça of OpenCFD to chat about to chat about the challenges of running a business where the primary offering (OpenFOAM®) is open-source & freely-available. We dig into:

• where/how/if being open-source can have an impact on a code’s value proposition;

• why fostering a community — and opening up channels to allow that community to make useful contributions — are some of the largest & most important challenges Fred faces with OpenFOAM®;

• why the success of their Windows release of OpenFOAM® was both a no-brainer & a surprise;

• what a classical Greek story about a feather has to do with the future of OpenFOAM®.

Links

http://www.openfoam.com/ — All about OpenCFD & OpenFOAM®