Dealing with Model Changes in SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation CFD – Advanced Flow Tips & Tricks

Making changes to the model geometry when a Flow Simulation study is active can be difficult to manage because the software is always checking for changes that require updating the study. I’m gonna go ahead and open up this component, and I’m just gonna get rid of these connectors. After rebuilding the assembly, what you’re gonna see when your add in is enabled is a message that prompts you to reset the computational domain and the mesh settings. This can create problems if you have things customized, and it can be very annoying if there are multiple changes to make.

The first message says “The model geometry or project settings have been modified. Do you want to reset the computational domain?” The answer to this question depends on the scenario, but in this case the answer is yes because I previously disabled bodies that were making the domain larger than necessary. Because I excluded the body on those glands, and I want the domain to be recalculated, this makes it easy. You can do that manually in the domain definition if you want to, it’s totally up to you.

But, if you go in and you set up something like a symmetry condition, or periodicity, or you manually set the size of your domain, or you customize something, choose NO to this message. Choosing yes will throw away all the work you’ve just done to customize things specific to your setup. I usually don’t tell it to remember my choice because sometimes I want it to reset, like this, and other times I don’t.

The next message is about resetting the mesh settings, which again depends on your situation. If the model changed size significantly, the basic mesh will need to update to keep the aspect ratios at an appropriate level. If it didn’t, and especially if you have set it to custom values, choose no to maintain your settings.

Now here’s the rub. If you leave the flow add-in enabled, and you have your study open, this thing’s gonna bug the tar out of you. It’s gonna just nonstop be asking you these two questions. If you’ve got a lot of changes to do, do them before you create your study or turn your add-in off temporarily. Then you can make changes more quickly, come back in, and let it rebuild the domain, and then it may also reset the mesh.