FluidFlow3 or AFT

[DGStavlas]

Dear all,

I am in the process of selecting a pipe flow analysis software for the firm I work for and have narrowed down to FluidFlow3 or AFT.
I was wondering if anyone has personal experience in both that could offer an opinion on the drawbacks of either software. Any help is appreciated, even if its simply your experience in one of the softwares.

Thank you in advance.

 

[LDKGR]

FluidFlow3 is cheaper.

 

[BigInch]

Cheaper in price means nothing. You can spend a whole lot more trying to use a program all the time that is not convenient for the types of systems you model. Synergy is expensive out of the box, but very convenient to use for long pipelines. Try modeling a pipeline using one of those process simulation things. You will spend far more time trying to model the input and interpret the output then your client may be willing to pay for. Then what do you do.

Ease of use can be far more important then the price on the box.

 

[DGStavlas]

Dear all,

First of all thank you for your useful replies.

To be honest money isn't an issue. The difference is about 3k. As written before after extensive search the firm I work for has narrowed down to FluidFlow3 or AFT.
I'm looking for users of these software that can share their experience.

 

[apetri]

I would say it depends from your application (liquid, gas, steady-state, transients ?)

I have used AFT Fathom, good but limited to liquids, for gas you need AFT Arrow.

I see that Fluidflow3 does liquid, gas and two-phase (don't know the details)

Similar considerations for transients.

 

[DGStavlas]

Dear Apetri,

Maybe I wasnt't so clear. I'm trying to make a comparison between fluidflow3 & the combination of AFT Fathom+AFT Arrow so as to cover most of the applications (liquid,gas,slurry etc.)

 

[stanier]

What AFT product? Fathom for steady state & slurries or Impulse for transient analysis? Perhaps Arrow for gas pipelines?

Speak to Graeme Ashford at Accutech in Perth Australia. He markets both FluidFlow 3 and AFT products. I presume steady state as FluidFlow 3 does not have transient analysis. Fathom has capability for analysing heat transfer in pipelines.

AFT's products were the first to have drag and drop functionality for the user interface. They suffer is some ways as the Johnny come lately's use more efficient coding and thus run times on large networks may be a few nanoseconds faster.

AFT is written by engineers for engineers. They are an ex NASA team. Support is second to none. They can even verify models (at a cost) if you have the QA police on your back.

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