How do I launch CFX-pre from WB 11 sp1?

[flaircraft]

Hi all,

I've been recently tasked with learning CFX. My company has been using Ansys Workbench 11 for a little over a year for structural and thermal analysis but nobody at work has ever used it for CFD. I've gone through several of the help file tutorials and so have used CFX-mesh to make several tutorial meshes. However I can't find anything in the help files on how to use CFX-Pre, not even how to open the application! All of the ANSYS CFX help files I can find are for the CFX mesher. The one tutorial I found online about CFX-Pre goes into how to use CFX-Pre to set up boundary conditions etc. but it is for Ansys 10. I could probably use that tutorial to work my way through setting up the model, but the instructions in that tutorial on how to launch CFX-Pre appear not to apply to V11. I've tried fiddling with it on my own but can't figure out how to launch the application either from within Workbench or using the product launcher.

Can anybody clue me in as to how to launch CFX-Pre? I'm using Windows x64 with Workbench 11 SP1.

Thanks!

 

[Baldy217]

If after the Workbench splash screen you don't have the Advanced CFD option, then you don't have CFX installed or you don't have the license for it.

If you have it installed, and have a license, than in the Empty Project Tab there is an option to start CFX-Pre on the bottom left.

And the reason there is no CFX tutorial is because you're looking at the Workbench help files. CFX has it's own help files.

 

[flaircraft]

After looking through the file structure on our machine (actually every ANSYS machine at work), I found several .exe files that start with CFX5 but they are all in the "CFXMeshApplet" folder. I don't see a folder on any of our machines that is titled anything like a plain "CFX". Comparing the old and new license files I do see some added "INCREMENT" lines in the new file that have various CFX arguments in them.

I'm thinking that CFX did not come with our original install DVD that we got for doing thermal and structural work. My management had informed me that every ANSYS install came with the entire software suite so that we didn't need to install anything for CFX past the software we already had, and that we'd just need an updated license file to unlock CFX capability. Am I right in that we need to get the CFX software from our vendor, or is management smarter than I give them credit for?

 

[Baldy217]

You don't have CFX installed. CFX is a separate install, but is normally on the same DVD as Workbench.

 

[flaircraft]

I downloaded CFX from ANSYS and installed it, and the "Advanced CFD" tab now shows up. Apparently all the ANSYS installs we had at work were done from downloaded .zip files from ANSYS rather than a DVD, and the downloads separate ANSYS and CFX to improve download time.

Thank you for your help Baldy!