The following new capabilities have been added:
General:
1. AutoCAD® 2006 compatibility
2. Default options for all Thermal Desktop entities have been added. Previous version only allowed the user to set the defaults for the 2d surfaces.
3. NASTRAN importer has been improved to import some thermal boundary conditions and to recognize double precision elements.
4. ANSYS® importer has been improved to import additional finite element types. 5. Visibility options for trackers and assemblies have been added.
6. Group names have been added to the selection for Thermal Desktop commands.
Thermal Desktop:
1. Contactor restarts have been added to speed up the calculation of contactors when the geometry or input has not changed. This restart capability works much like the radia- tion restarts.
2. A multiplier can now be specified for time dependent heating rates.
3. Natural convection pressures can be output as symbols to SINDA. This will help facil- itate changing pressures for vacuum pump down or for balloon type vehicles that rise in the atmosphere.
4. Bivariate arrays of conductivity versus pressure and temperature can be plotted. 5. Thermal Electric Coolers (TEC) sizing has been implemented.
6. Translation and Rotation pages have been added for finite difference solids. 7. Interior optical properties can be specified for finite difference solids.
RadCAD:
1. Optical properties of single nodes on a surface can now be specified. This capability is similar to the TRASYS MODPR functionality.
2. RADK calculations and output have been modified to use less memory, which results in larger models being run. RADK jobs can be approximately 30% larger in size. 3. A merge analysis groups function has been added.
FloCAD:
1. A SetFlow object is now used to create fixed flow (MFRSET, VFRSET) devices in FLUINT. This removes the mass and volumetric flow options from the pump/fan object.
2. Pump input forms have been expanded to include several new input data options including full maps. Optional use of flow coefficient (F) and head coefficient (Y) instead of volumetric flow rates (G) and heads (H). Additional unit types are also sup- ported. Flow area input is supported.
3. Tabular paths input expanded to include more units and options. 4. Lump states can be specified to be stagnant or moving.
5. More user control over Pipe surface for graphics and shape resolution. Control param- eter added to Graphics Size tab in the Preferences form. This provides the user some control over the trade off of pipe calculation speed and accuracy. Higher resolution results in longer computation times, but more fidelity in the geometric representation. 6. The RcPathRotationAxis object added to provide control over the path rotation
options in SINDA/FLUINT.
Release Notes: Thermal Desktop 4.7
The following new capabilities have been added:
General:
1. Color contouring of surface primitives (i.e. rectangles, disks, cones, etc.) has been added.
2. The maximum number of colors in the color bar has been increased from 10 to 15. 3. A general approach was made to allow the user to input more comments into the
model. The primary focus of this was to allow for comments on the Expression forms, which gives the user the capability to input a comment for all fields. Also note that if a comment is entered on the expression form, the field where the user double-clicked to access the expression form is displayed in a light blue. If the user defines an expres- sion, the data in the field is bolded, as it has been in previous releases of Thermal Desktop. A comment page was also added to the Case Set Properties.
4. Previous “name” or “comment” fields have been enhanced so that if the user double- clicks in these fields, a text editor window will come up, and the user may enter a com- ment of any length. The first line of these fields is also used as a descriptor name, which is shown in the model browser, and in other places.
5. Multi-Edit mode has been added to the Case Set Manager which allows the user to edit more than one Case Set at a time.
6. Filtering options have been added to find nodes that are not connected to anything, or to find nodes that are not connected to geometry.
7. Contactor graphics have been improved to show each surface from and to markers that are color coded. The from markers are drawn from the proper face which should aid in the contactors being created more accurately. The previous method of drawing lines between the from and to surfaces was deemed to be too confusing to users.
8. Area based contactors now have a ray tracing calculation option in order to speed up these calculations for the situation where normal rays from the from surface will hook up properly to the to surfaces. Tested models are running 30 times faster for these cal- culations.
9. An importer has been written to import Harvard Thermals TAS-PCB models. 10. An importer has been written to import ANSYS finite element models.
11. Utility functions for finite elements have been added to split quad elements, refine ele- ments, and shift the starting edge/node have been added.
Thermal Desktop:
1. Mapping capabilities have been enhanced with variable tolerancing and user definition of which entities to map to. Detailed diagnostics are also output which tell users which surface a point was mapped to.
2. Conductors can now be set to use natural convection heat transfer correlations that are available as SINDA subroutines.
3. Insulation has been added FD Solid Bricks, Cylinders, and Spheres.
4. A component has been added to aid in the evaluation of Thermal Electric Coolers (TECs) has been added.
5. Insulation properties can now recede.
6. A global parameter has been added to quickly turn off all surfaces.
7. Density and conductivity scaling factors have been added to the thin shell primitives, as well as the finite elements.
RadCAD:
1. Postprocessing of Time Average, Direct Absorbed, and Reflected Absorbed heating rates has been added.
2. The planet temperature used for orbital heating rates can now be specified for both the dark and the sun sides of the planet. This can aid in lunar moon missions.
3. A button was added to allow users to disable outputting radks to space. This removes the need to place dummy surfaces around a model to filter out radks to space.
4. Radk summary that was printed at the bottom of the .k file is now printed to a tab delimited file, which is easily loaded into Excel. The file contains a list of all nodes in the analysis group.
5. A complete radk summary is now generated when the run is complete. This summary details how many radks were generated, as well as how many were filtered out. Also, the number of nodes with large Bij’s to inactive nodes is also printed, as well as the number of nodes that see inactive surfaces.
6. Radk jobs in the Case Set Properties will now run an overlapping surfaces check once the radk job completes. This should help users identify problem areas in radiation models.
7. Solar Flux can now be input as a function of time.
8. Integrated emissivity can now be a function of temperature. This functionality only works for the dynamic mode so that radks can be updated as the temperature change.
FloCAD:
1. Pipes with walls made from a list of surfaces/solids. Allows variable flow area along the pipe.
2. Ability to add Clone Lumps.
3. Natural Convection routines are selectable from list in User Defined Ties.
4. Postprocessing of fluid models greatly enhanced in the model browser. Tabulations added for lumps and paths. User controlled sorting of output.
5. Ability to merge lumps. 6. Twin path control from GUI. 7. Insulation option added for Pipes.
Release Notes: Thermal Desktop 4.6
The following new capabilities have been added:
General:
1. This version is compatible with AutoCAD 2004, as well as AutoCAD 2000, 2000i, and 2002.
2. Improved graphics interaction that fixes previous picking options for nodes and enti- ties that draw text.
3. Thermal entities are now recognized from External References. This capability makes it much easier for more than one person to work on different parts of the same model at the same time.
4. Filter box allows for multiple selection of types. This facilitates changing visibility and node numbers for more than a single type with a single command.
5. The Splash Screen automatically disappears which facilitates the loading of large models.
6. Various changes to the Model Browser have been made. The iconified Model Browser will be moved to the upper left. Selection in the Model Browser is automatically updated in the AutoCAD graphics window. If the user saves the model with the Model Browser display, the Model Browser will come up when the model is reloaded. Model Browser now defaults to the AutoUpdate model being on.
Thermal Desktop:
1. Commands have been added to show the calculated points for contact and contactors. This helps in the verification that they are set up correctly.
2. Improved Heater Logic to hold temperatures constant during steady state, and also to output heater summary logic for transient. This logic shows total power used, total on time, and number of cycles.
3. The Cond/Cap page now has an option to specify to generate nodes as arithmetic. 4. FD Solids (Brick, Cylinder, Sphere) have scaling factors to vary the conductivity in
the u, v, and w directions.
5. Model Browser has the capability to show some of the SINDA-like output for
TPRINT, QPRINT, CPRINT, NODTAB, NODMAP type of functions. The capability to find how much energy is transferred between submodels has also been added. 6. Pressure dependent insulation conductors have been added.
7. Translation and Rotation pages have been added to the ‘conic’ type of surfaces. The pages will facilitate the parameterization of the surface locations without the creation of an assembly.
8. Thermophysical properties to account for melting and freezing of materials has been added. This capability takes advantage of the SINDA subroutine FUSION.
9. NASTRAN data mapping for transient cases has been added.
RadCAD:
1. User can control if Heatrate Output is the classical DA11MC calls or the LOADQ sub- routine.
2. The spacecraft can be shown at multiple positions in the orbit view, at the same time. 3. Trackers can be disabled on a per radiation job basis from the Case Set manager. 4. Time Offsets can be added to articulated radks and heating rate outputs, which facili-
tates the linking of multiple orbits.
5. Users can add customized logic before and after articulated radk or heating rate output logic.
FloCAD:
1. Pipe objects have been improved to show full 3D representations with the outer shape being defined by the user.
2. Pipe objects also have full radiation capabilities.
3. Improved heat pipe modeling with calls to the SINDA/FLUINT HEATPIPE2 routines, as well as the proper calls to HPGLOC.
Release Notes: Thermal Desktop 4.5
The following new capabilities have been added:
Thermal Desktop:
1. New Surfaces are Ellipsoid, Elliptic Cone, Elliptic Cylinder, and Offset Paraboloid. 2. New Finite Difference solids are Brick, Cylinder, and Sphere.
3. Tools to facilitate making movies (avi files) for postprocessing and viewing the space- craft in orbit.
4. A new “contactor” object allows for creating conductors between groups of surfaces. 5. Import of Material and Optical Properties.
6. Quick commands have been added to “Toggle the Background Color” and to save the graphics area to a bitmap file.
7. Ability to change the lists of objects that are defined on conductor, heatload, heater, and tie forms.
8. Symbol manager commands to purge unused symbols and to rename symbols have been implemented.
RadCAD:
1. Free Molecular Heating (FMH) algorithms have been added.
2. Quick checks to allow for finding surfaces that overlap to aid in radiation model debugging.
FloCAD:
1. Pipe objects added to FloCAD allowing easy subdivision of lines into paths and vol- umes. Types of pipes include heat pipes, fluid pipes with walls, fluid pipes without walls, and wall only (which can be a solid ‘wire’).
2. FloCAD has new path types for orifices and table driven pressure drops (Tabular). 3. Output of expressions to SINDA/FLUINT from Nodes, Conductors, Lumps, and
Paths.
Release Notes: Thermal Desktop 4.4
The following new capabilities have been added:
1. Compatibility with AutoCAD 2000i - Please note that all previous models of Thermal Desktop that contain finite elements must first be saved in Thermal Desktop Version 4.4 before being loaded into AutoCAD 2000i.
2. Dynamic SINDA allows the user to manipulate Thermal Desktop from SINDA and reload conductors, capacitance, and heating rates. Must have SINDA 4.4 or greater to use. This means quick access to optimize locations of components, correlation of emissivity, reliability determination of a system, temperature dependent emissivity (greyness must be satisfied), and many other things.
3. Ellipse surfaces have been added. 4. Import/Export of TSS geometries.
5. Improved radk culling options that can limit the number of radks output to SINDA. 6. FloCAD FK Calculator for components like valves, screens, and bends.
7. FloCAD capability for multiple constituent models. 8. Case Set Log file.
9. Case Set running in different directory.
10. Case Set control over which submodels are built in the SINDA model. 11. Color coded SINDA text editor.
12. Model browser list by contact.
13. Model browser List and Highlight of selected objects.
14. Surface editing filter functions to filter on “Normal Angle to a Point”, and also “Nor- mal Parallel to Vector”.
15. Planetary radiation input as flux instead of temperature.
16. Documented sec.tion on AutoCAD graphics settings to improve interactive perfor- mance.