A long time ago, on a website not too far, far away, there was a technology preview called Project Falcon.

Project Falcon was our technology preview that simulated air flow around vehicles, buildings, outdoor equipment, consumer products, or other objects of your choosing in a virtual wind tunnel. Falcon technology was extremely geometry tolerant and easy to use, enabling you to begin seeing and understanding air flow behavior within seconds of starting the application. Results updated almost in real-time in response to changes in wind-direction and speed that you specified. Visualization tools included 2D and 3D flow lines, shaded result planes, vector plots, and surface pressure shading. Quantified outputs included velocity, pressure, drag force, and drag coefficient. Project Falcon used a revolutionary automatic meshing technology that handled flow around any geometry at any stage of design. This technology was coupled with a transient, incompressible fluid flow solver and LES turbulence model in a way that delivered quick results and required very little setup on behalf of the user. The technology preview graduated to become Autodesk Flow Design.

There was also a technology preview called Project Ventus for Simulation CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics). As defined on Wikipedia: "Computational Fluid Dynamics is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical analysis and algorithms to solve and analyze problems that involve fluid flows." In short, calculations are performed to simulate the interaction of liquids and gases with surfaces.

Project Ventus for Simulation CFD was our technology preview of a solution for generating CFD quality meshes for models that would traditionally be impossible to mesh without tedious CAD cleanup and alteration. The goal of Project Ventus was to eliminate time and effort required to generate quality CFD meshes for external flow analyses in Autodesk Simulation CFD software. Project Ventus also provided a secondary benefit: There were file types that Project Ventus could read and generate meshes for that Simulation CFD could not work with at the time, including Autodesk Alias, Google Sketchup, STL, and OBJ files. This technology preview retired from Autodesk Labs.

Here we are today and we have Project Calrissian for CFD.

Project Calrissian for CFD is our free technology preview of an application that combines functionality from Autodesk Flow Design and Project Ventus. The bulk of this preview includes enhancements to the capabilities of Flow Design. These enhancements include solver optimizations, the ability to pause an analysis, lift and drag charts, and additional results viewing capabilities. When the need arises to go beyond the fluids physics of Project Calrissian, there is the ability to export the model directly to Autodesk CFD. Surface wrapping technology that existed in Project Ventus now resides in Project Calrissian and allows you to push the surface wrapped geometry directly into Autodesk CFD 2017 for more detailed analysis.

Join the project.

As we did on Project Falcon and Project Ventus, we look forward to your feedback on Project Calrissian. You can reach the team via labs.calrissian@autodesk.com or the feedback forum associated with the Autodesk Labs project on the Autodesk Feedback Community site. The character, Lando Calrissian, first appeared in The Empire Strikes Back as the administrator of Cloud City. Given how the cloud empowers Autodesk simulation solutions, I think this technology preview is aptly named. The application will operate until August 30. Based on feedback, the technology could then graduate, retire, or be extended.

The force is alive in the lab.