Ansys Discovery or Flagship Tools: The Right Tool For The Right Job

In the movie Gran Torino, Walt Kowalski is getting his friend Thao Vang Lor prepared for his first day working at a construction site.  “Take these three items right here.  You can have these.  WD-40, vise grips, and some duct tape.  Any man worth his salt can do half the household chores with just those three things”.  In a similar vein, I was cutting down some invasive trees in my backyard with an EGO chainsaw in a matter of minutes.  I texted my friend and told him how much I love this chainsaw for its power, speed, and efficiency.  “The right tool for the right job”, he responds.  What do these handymen stories have to do with simulation?  Excellent question!  Much like hand tools and power tools, you must be selective with the tools you use in simulation.  One might complete the job in record time but give you less-than-desirable accuracy to launch a product.  Another might give you tremendously accurate results, but risk delaying that product launch.  In this article, we will compare the benefits of fast and easy-to-use tools like Ansys Discovery to the more advanced capability flagship tools like Ansys Fluent, Mechanical, or HFSS.  Which is the best for your application?   Let’s find out. 

Ansys Discovery: Best For Directional Guidance 

In recent months, more customers have been exploring Ansys Discovery and seeing it as a great entry point into the Ansys simulation ecosystem.  As a result, we’ve been getting more questions about its application:  

“Is it going to give me good enough results?” 

“Should I just jump right into flagship tools?” 

“Is there an in-between option?” 

All meaningful questions, that can be answered in one phrase: Ansys Discovery is a design tool, not a validation tool.  To clarify, when I say a “design tool”, I’m referring to something that can aid at the very front-end of product development.  Design engineers walk a tightrope for a new product concept design.  If they proceed developing too many concepts, they risk time and capital validating the “best” design heading to production (and therefore delay a product launch).  Conversely, if they rush into product development without concepting (and simulating) a few design iterations, they risk overlooking an even more robust design, potentially resulting in engineering rework, retests, and launch delays.  Either outcome is time and capital intensive.  These roadblocks are why Ansys Discovery was developed.  With Ansys Discovery, a design engineer is able to quickly narrow down the most viable concepts with minimal time and capital investment.  By conducting some A-to-B comparison simulations, a design engineer can go into production design work with a much higher degree of confidence that the concepts they selected will have the best chance of making it to production.  

Because Ansys Discovery’s Explore mode leverages the GPU for computation and post-processing, the process is typically much faster than setting up a full simulation in Ansys flagship tools and leveraging your dedicated simulation engineers to do it.  When you reduce your concept design count, you reduce development spend, testing time, and have a greater likelihood of maintaining launch timing. The key differentiator to remember, however, is that Discovery is not going to have the same level of accuracy as flagship tools.  For instance, if you are looking for results to be within 5-10% accuracy, Discovery is not the tool you should be using.  These types of tolerances are best addressed by flagship tools that require more upfront work for meshing, solving, and post-processing. 

Ansys Flagship Tools: Best for Production-Intent Activities 

For when you absolutely have to simulate the most accurate physics, accept no substitutes.  Once you’ve iterated your concepts through Ansys Discovery and have narrowed down your production-intent design, it’s time to bring out the heavy hitters.  Flagship tools like Fluent, Mechanical, and HFSS are designed for robust simulation capability with an emphasis on accuracy and advanced physics.  The amount of control an engineer has over the mesh, simulation setup, and post-processing capabilities is head-and-shoulders above CAD embedded competitors, and for good reason.  People are designing space ships, cars, fighter jets, and defense products (just to name a few) using this software.  When customers aren’t sure if they need to leverage flagship tools, I will ask them “are you validating your product for production or certifying it according to government or regulated standards?”  If any (or all) of those questions are yes, you need to be using flagship simulation capability.  In these scenarios, accuracy is paramount, so additional time is typically budgeted in the product development cycle for simulation that supports production-intent designs.  These simulations can be carried out weeks or months in advance, and simulation engineers can spend the bulk of their time tuning a model to ensure a widget passes physical testing with flying colors the first time.  Can you use flagship tools for concept design work?  Absolutely.  But the questions you must ask are: 

“Does the level of accuracy I’m getting from these tools warrant the extra time it takes to get the model setup and running?” 

“Are ‘good enough’ results all that’s needed at this point in the development process?” 

Now, what I’m proposing may be scary.  “You’re saying I should intentionally choose a less accurate solution to my problem?”.  Certainly not.  But what I am saying is don’t be afraid to use the WD-40, vice grips, and duct tape for those simpler tasks where engineering effort can be better spent on higher value activities that require those chainsaws and impact guns.  The value of a simulation engineer is not just in their ability to simulate, but also discern what methods will solve the problem as quickly, accurately, and cheaply as possible.  So next time you launch a new product, try mixing it up.  Leverage Ansys Discovery to rapidly narrow down your concepts and use the flagship tools for when you’re ready to put a product in your customer’s hands.  Use the right tools for the right jobs.