The 2023.1 Ansys Release Is Here
Ansys recently announced its 2023.1 release to ring in the new year, and there are changes all over the place. Engineers who use Ansys for structural analysis, computational fluid dynamics and electrical design are getting boosts large and small with this release.
The simulation giant has a lot of proverbial irons in simulation fires, so its big releases generally cover a lot of bases. Beyond adding features and capabilities for its users, Ansys is continuing to add customization options for hardcore programming enthusiasts and changing what happens in the background of the software. And although changes to workflows and shifting from CPUs to graphics processing units (GPUs) might not be the flashy things that make the top of a press release, they can have big impacts on users.
Ansys Fluent Is Gaining Features Across Several Products
Looking through the list of changes, the Ansys Fluent family updates immediately jump out. For a long time, Ansys has talked about working on using GPUs to accelerate simulation computations. GPUs have the potential to offer increased performance, lower costs and lower power consumption compared to traditional CPU clusters. Engineers can now take advantage of GPUs with the full release of the Ansys Fluent multi-GPU solver.
Energy engineers working with hydrogen also get a bump in the new release. Hydrogen is one of several energy solutions that engineers are hoping will bring us into a sustainable future with less net carbon. The benefits for fuel cells and gas turbines are big but challenges also exist. Hydrogen can be incredibly flammable and difficult to produce. Ansys Fluent already helps to mitigate the risks associated with hydrogen production and volatility, but 2023.1 introduces sustainability tools that hope to increase the green benefits of using hydrogen as a fuel. Like so many energy projects in place today, hydrogen might not be the one thing that gets us to net-zero emissions but may instead be one improvement that provides a large aggregate benefit.
Python users who have already taken advantage of PyFluent are getting a new interface. PyFluent, which was officially released at the 2022R2 software update, brought the Wild West of Python customization under a formal Ansys banner. If you know programmers who love Python, then you know how passionate they are about this language over all others. PyFluent has an active GitHub for licensed Fluent users to play around with the software and create shortcuts and customizations based on a specific engineering application.
Now with 2023.1 the PyConsole enables users to employ Python right in the Fluent frames. This could potentially save the hardcore programmers and customizers from having to keep track of information across multiple windows and interfaces, and feature additions like autocomplete and Python command quick-search should help with throughput.
Materials Selection Is Important, but Can We Do It Better?
When Ansys brought Granta under its product umbrella in 2019, the company talked about three pillars of material selection: managing, selecting and teaching material property data. Granta materials information (MI) is a great two-way tool that lets suppliers control the proprietary material properties that simulation users can download for studies and models. Engineers can be sure that properties for a specific supplier and grade of material are correct and up to date, allowing for the highest accuracy in results.
Some of the biggest innovations in the early years of the 2020s are working materials in ways that we might not have imagined even 10 years ago. Electrification of everything is still happening, while autonomous and electric vehicles are in the early adoption phases. The information that supports these technologies, “metals, polymers, PCB and electromagnetic absorbing data,” are all on the minds of Ansys Granta MI engineers as the software continues to develop.
Changes for 2023 R1 in Granta includes an updated UX and the ability to create user-independent configurations. The CAD connector tool solidifies the importance of material selection in product lifecycle management by creating closer ties between simulation runs and material assignments. Sustainability is a concept that keeps popping up in the 2023 R1 press release and materials selection gets a little taste of it as well. The Eco Audit tool still lets users select material with an eye on sustainability and low impact living. The new access method for this tool, however, is the Ansys Gateway. Amazon Web Services and Ansys announced the Ansys Gateway back in October 2022 as a way for Ansys customers to easily access its software and tools through the cloud. Material selection is one of the places where being able to access data through any web browser will bring huge benefits to users. Not as Much Love for the Electronics Design.
The electrification of everything continues to push the need for electronics design and simulation. Energy, automotive, aerospace and consumer industries all need electronic components to be smaller, faster and more efficient. The changes for Ansys’ electronic products are a little less visible with this release, but some of the big announcements might be lagging.
Redhawk-SC Electrothermal has some changes coming under the hood that might not be overt for users but will still have an impact. New thermal methods will only require half the memory for thermal analysis, which should provide better results faster. Beyond just speed benefits, simulation engineers working the big jobs can now analyze larger systems and more interactions. Ansys also says that transient solutions can be done in half the time and that the Redhawk-SC database is 30 percent smaller—enabling faster results. These efficiency gains are all positive moves that will make the simulation work easier.
It’s curious that there aren’t as many big electronics changes called out here in the early 2023 R1 announcements, but that might signify some big things popping up in the next few months.
What Does It All Mean?
Releases like this are born to meet a variety of needs. There’s a balance between completely new applications, quality-of-life updates for hardcore users and bug fixes or minor changes. Several parts of this update highlight widespread unveilings of features and tools that were in a short-scope release. This is a great indicator that the engineers and programmers at Ansys are listening to their user base and continuing to widen the scope of what the software can do.
One thing we don’t talk about often when big releases happen is the casual user. Ansys is used by thousands of companies around the world to build products and analyze processes on the leading edge of technology, but there are many users who are doing more mundane work. This semester I am teaching a sophomore-level mechanical engineering lab that has a unit that ties into the mechanics of materials and uses Ansys to do some simple beam analysis. Using a tiny portion of the software’s structural analysis abilities means that we aren’t really affected by the marquee-level changes in the 2023.1 release, but at the same time will feel no ill effects. In a worst-case scenario, some menus or GUI windows might move, but muscle memory will adapt to those cosmetic changes quickly. It’s likely that the many engineers who only use Ansys a few times a month won’t notice big changes from the 2023.1 release. However, there are many delivery methods or computing changes that casual users who want to improve the process can take advantage of.
Announcements like this one really show the incredibly wide breadth that a software like Ansys has. Simulation as an industry has grown to the point that what you think of when you hear the word “simulation” might be completely different from the applications that come to mind. Solving any engineering optimization problem can now probably be done with some kind of simulation. This release is not only about the software and new capabilities but also about changing the ways that engineers can access and use the software.