SVS Tools pro Ansys Fluent

Technická podpora

hotline@svsfem.cz | +420 543 254 555.

SVS Tools stejně jako další nadstavby pro Ansys vyvíjíme a podporuje my v SVS FEM.
Jsme autorizovaným Ansys partnerem pro Česko a Slovensko.

English version / Czech version

SVS Tools for Ansys Fluent

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SVS Tools is an extension for Ansys Fluent developed by SVS FEM s.r.o. It provides tools used daily by our own simulation engineers. Everything is available from the Fluent ribbon. After installation, a SVS Tools tab appears in Fluent with three areas:

1. measuring and documenting what your hardware can actually achieve,
2. setting up porous zones with automatic calculation of their parameters,
3. analyzing solver output (`*.out` files) in a standalone desktop application.

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No configuration is required — the installer automatically locates the Python interpreter included with the Ansys installation, does not require administrator rights, and installs everything only for the current user.

Find out what your hardware can really do

The purchase, sizing, or acceptance testing of CFD hardware should not be based on isolated speed and performance figures. We set out to change this approach. The Report RunTime tool can quantify the speed of your hardware, allowing you to make specific comparisons between individual computers. With a single click, it writes a complete runtime report to the Fluent transcript and displays an MIUPS value at the end — Million Iteration-Updates Per Second, i.e. the number of iterations per second for one million cells:

MIUPS = (mesh cells × iterations) / time in seconds / 1,000,000

(A higher value is better = more iterations in the same amount of time.)

Because the value is normalized by mesh size, MIUPS can be compared across different cases: using a single number, you can compare a workstation with a compute node, 8 processes with 64, or one Fluent version with the next. The report displays three variants, and the difference between them is already informative:

• MIUPS (solver) — derived from Fluent’s Performance Timer, representing the throughput of the solver itself.
• MIUPS per process (solver) — solver throughput divided by the number of compute processes. This value shows whether adding more cores is still worthwhile.
• MIUPS (end-to-end) — derived from the total simulation time, including everything that happens outside the solver. A large difference compared with the solver value indicates I/O or overhead rather than computational performance.

Alongside the result, all input values are displayed — the number of mesh cells, the number of iterations actually evaluated, the time per iteration for both the solver and the end-to-end calculation, both total times, and the number of compute processes — so every value can be recalculated manually from the transcript. Nothing is estimated or extrapolated: if a value cannot be read from Fluent’s reports, the line shows not available rather than a guess.

Typical uses:

• We have multiple older and newer computers in the company and want to assess how much faster each computer is and where it is worth running computations.
• We are considering purchasing new computers and want to determine how much faster they will be than our existing computers.

Report RunTime, Quick RunTime and Custom Exit

Three levels of detail, depending on what you need:

1. Report RunTime — the complete picture. A summary of the case settings and boundary conditions, mesh size and memory usage, CPU model, RAM modules including manufacturer, part number, speed, and capacity, disk models, GPGPU statistics, process statistics, system and I/O timing, the number of compute processes, and the MIUPS benchmark block.
2. Quick RunTime — timing and process statistics only, for a quick overview during a computation. It deliberately omits the mesh-size query, which is slow on large meshes.
3. Custom Exit — a full report generated automatically when Fluent exits, so a record exists even if nobody remembered to create one. It is available both on the ribbon and in the File menu.

Everything is written to Fluent’s standard transcript, so the output remains available even after Fluent is closed, and you can attach it directly to a request to compare your computer with new hardware. The Exported Info button opens a dialog listing everything that will be written to the transcript. Nothing is sent from your computer without your knowledge. The only information we receive is what you send us yourself by email or to the hotline when you attach the Fluent transcript (fluent*.trn). The reporting features also work in Fluent on Linux. Please contact us for installation on Linux here hotline@svsfem.cz. The procedure differs from installation on Windows.

Porous Zones in a Form, Not in the TUI

Setting up a porous zone in Fluent requires calculating the coefficients for the zone parameters. The Porous Zone button — the newly added PorZo utility — calculates these coefficients for you:

1. SVS Tools loads the zones directly from the open case, including their types: wall, porous jump, fluid, and solid.
2. PorZo opens with the zones already listed, and you enter the porous-zone data.
3. After confirmation, the settings are automatically applied back to Fluent as boundary-condition commands. No export, no copying, and no second round of clicking.

Nothing is applied until you confirm it: closing PorZo without confirmation is treated as a simple cancellation, and the case remains exactly as it was. Preset filters that you create remain your data and will also remain after reinstalling SVS Tools — frequently used settings therefore only need to be entered once.

PorZo runs on Windows and requires the free Microsoft .NET 8 Runtime (x64). The installer checks whether it is present and warns you if it is missing.

SVS Output Analyzer

If you save Fluent monitor files (*.out) to disk, you may have been missing a tool for easily plotting graphs from these outputs. SVS Output Analyzer is a desktop application designed to display curve data, not only from Fluent. It can:

• compare several monitors simultaneously,
• assess whether the solution has actually converged,
• create graphs that can be used directly in a report.

It opens where you work. When launched from the ribbon, the application starts with the folder already loaded that contains all your data from the current simulation. At the same time, it is a standalone application with a shortcut in the Start menu and on the desktop, for working with results outside Fluent.

Formats. Fluent monitor files (.out), including merging several monitors into a single dataset; Flownex output; generic CSV files; and Ansys CFX .res files on machines where Ansys CFX is installed.

Graphs. Individual graphs are arranged in a configurable panel grid. You can use the cursor to read values from curves and compare computations. Automatic refresh keeps the graphs up to date even while a computation is running. Axis labels, fonts, scales, and layouts are saved as settings, so your preferred appearance does not change every time you start the application. Each graph can be copied to the clipboard or saved as an image for use in a report or email.

Analysis. Statistics calculated from the data — average, peak-to-peak value, derivatives, and extrema detection — help answer questions about convergence and oscillations that a monitoring graph alone cannot resolve. FFT converts a signal, such as a force, into a frequency spectrum, providing a way to evaluate data in the frequency domain. The built-in calculator evaluates your own expressions over the loaded series, so a derived quantity — a difference, ratio, or coefficient — simply becomes another curve in the graph.

Sessions. Ready-made configurations of loaded files, layouts, and derived quantities can be saved and reopened; recent sessions can be restored with a single click. Returning to a case after a month therefore does not mean rebuilding the analysis from scratch.

Installation and IT Requirements

SVS Tools is supplied as a single Windows installation EXE and is deliberately lightweight:

• No administrator rights. It is installed for a single user, in that user’s own application folder.
• No Python to maintain. SVS Tools uses the CPython interpreter included with your Ansys installation. There is nothing to install, update, or keep compatible.
• Any Ansys version, including future versions. The installer finds all Ansys versions installed on the machine and selects the newest one with a usable interpreter; if necessary, it falls back to an older installation. There is no need to maintain a version list — new Ansys releases are detected automatically.
• Your existing Fluent customizations are safe. If you already have your own .fluent file, the installer backs it up before installing the ribbon and restores it when SVS Tools is uninstalled.
• A small, predictable footprint. Files are written only to your user profile and local application data; the registry is only read to locate Ansys and the .NET Runtime. Uninstallation removes everything that was installed, including the ribbon file.

Requirements

Ansys Fluent with the CPython interpreter included in the Ansys installation (standard in current versions).
Windows for the installer, PorZo, and SVS Output Analyzer. The runtime reporting features also work in Fluent on Linux.
Microsoft .NET 8 Runtime (x64) — only for PorZo, and available free of charge. All other parts of SVS Tools work without it.
Ansys CFX installation — only if you want to read CFX .res files in SVS Output Analyzer.

Technical support

hotline@svsfem.cz | +420 543 254 555

SVS Tools is developed and supported by SVS FEM s.r.o., an Authorized Ansys Channel Partner for Czech Republic and Slovakia.