Creating/Opening a Project
After logging in, hover over your username/profile icon in the upper right, then select Dashboard in the drop-down menu. Your dashboard may be a little empty if you have a new account but this is where you can access all your projects. You can also see your forum activity, core hours remaining, and the status of running simulations on the right side. To create a new project, click New Project.
Figure 1.1: Dashboard menu with the New Project button highlighted in red.
Fill in the Project Title and Description, the rest can be filled in as desired or left alone. On eligible accounts projects can be specified as private here. Click Create.
Figure 1.2: The Create New Project menu.
A naming system should be created and used to keep the account organized. After running several simulations, it becomes very difficult to remember the differences between each one.
To open an existing project, locate the project tile in the Dashboard and click on the arrow in the upper right corner of the tile. Clicking elsewhere on the tile will allow you to preview the project and give options such as editing the project, sharing it, duplicating it, or deleting it.
Figure 1.3: An example of a pre-existing project tile, new users don’t need to worry about this quite yet.
(I’m not suggesting this is a perfect naming system, but it’s better than several of the other projects on the team account.)
Uploading Geometry
Once the project is open, there is a navigation panel on the left which will display all the settings to setup and run the simulation. Begin by uploading a CAD file of the geometry to simulate by clicking on the plus symbol beside Geometries (Slightly different in a new project, SimScale will prompt you to upload your first geometry). Select the appropriate file(s), they should appear under the Import List.
The arrow to the left of the file will give some advanced options for the upload. I never needed these, but keep them in mind if you want SimScale to handle the geometry differently.
Finish by clicking Import in the bottom left of the pop-up window.
Figure 1.4: Pop-up prompt when the project is brand new.
Figure 1.5: Use the navigation panel for future uploads, clicking on the plus symbol will bring up the same prompt as in the previous image.
Figure 1.6: Selecting a file will add it to the import list. Make sure the correct file type (e.g. Solidworks, STEP, IGES) is displayed beneath the name. SimScale has interpreted files as the wrong file type before.
For anyone who wants to follow along with this guide, I’ll upload the simplified MSXIV geometry here
Create Simulation
Once the geometry is uploaded, the simulation can be created by clicking the plus symbol beside Simulations. For CFD simulations at low speeds (Mach number less than 0.3) select Incompressible and click Create Simulation.
Figure 1.7: Most simulations for Midnight Sun will be incompressible, although SimScale is capable of many others. I believe there have been discussions of using SimScale for thermal and structural simulations.
Several more options will appear in the navigation panel, however not every setting can be completed yet. The next step will be to create a mesh.
Each simulation setting will have a red, yellow, or green symbol beside it. Red means that a setting needs to be filled out to continue, green means that a value has been saved for that setting. I think yellow is only used for the mesh, and it means the mesh has been generated but is not selected.