Introduction

blueCFD®-AIR is a Graphical User Interface software that allows a more efficient application of CFD to problems in buildings and structures. AEC professionals thus gain access to an easy to use and highly precise tool, to aid in the analysis of one or several design alternatives.

Currently it supports two geometry input file formats:

• gbXML (Green Building XML): These files are usually generated by CAD and BIM applications, as well as other LEED applications that use gbXML for building and energy information exchange. For this format, a plug-in is provided for Autodesk® Revit®.

• STL (Stereolithography): This file format is used for providing both the geometry and how the surfaces relate to each room in the building. To make it easier to generate files in this format, an easy export-and-open plug-in for SketchUp is provided.

The CFD capabilities used by blueCFD-AIR are provided by blueCFD-Core, which is a high quality cross-compiled build version of OpenFOAM®.

Disclaimers and acknowledgements:

• This offering is not approved or endorsed by OpenCFD Limited, producer and distributor of the OpenFOAM software via www.openfoam.com and owner of the OPENFOAM® and OpenCFD® trade marks.

• AUTODESK and REVIT are registered trademarks of AutoDesk, Inc.

• SketchUp is a registered trademark of Trimble Navigation Limited.

Features

In blueCFD®-AIR are currently provided the following features:

• Simple work-flow for simulating incompressible fluid flow inside rooms and buildings, including:

  • Import building models from the following formats:

    • gbXML (Green Building XML);

    • STL (Stereolithography).

  • Defining the boundary conditions;

  • Mesh generation;

  • Setting up and running the simulation.

  

• Automatic and manual post-processing of the simulation results, without the need for 3rd party applications.

• Simulate the age of air within rooms and buildings.

• On-demand creation of a summarized report of the performed simulation and its results in HTML format.

• Among the advanced features are the residual plots and configuring the mesh generation.

• Runs in the most common Windows Operating Systems, for both 32 and 64 bit platforms on x86 processor architectures.

With blueCFD-AIR are also provided the following plug-ins:

• An easy export-and-open plug-in for Autodesk® Revit®, which relies on the file format gbXML.

• An easy export-and-open plug-in for SketchUp, which relies on the file format STL.

The following features are planned for the periodic releases of blueCFD-AIR until the next major version 2.00:

• Buoyancy flows (implemented as of 1.03).

• Extended range of boundary conditions (ongoing).

• Higher degree of customization (ongoing).

• Simulate fluid flow outside of buildings (technology preview since 1.03).

• Run on any Linux distribution and on Mac OS X (sometime in the near future).

The release notes for blueCFD-AIR 1.04f are provided here.

Please take a look at our development roadmap for further information on this topic. If you have an opinion regarding this development roadmap we are keen on hearing it, so, please, do feel free to get back in touch. Last but not least, we are open to sponsoring opportunities that may result in a reshuffle of the development roadmap so that the feature that interests you more, gets released sooner rather than later.

How to Get It

You can freely download the installer from the blueCFD-AIR download area on our website.

blueCFD®-AIR is available with the following licenses:

• Cost-Free License where you can use all features that blueCFD-AIR provides, without any time restrictions.

• Paid Support License, which offers all of the available features, along with support and warranty. The support provided through this license is customized for each client, regarding project support, training and adding new features to blueCFD-AIR. For more details, please use the contact form.

System Requirements

Minimum requirements:

Suggested workstation characteristics:

Legend:

¹ 2GB is the maximum for any application in 32bit.