Fidelity Pointwise Release Notes

  • Version: V18.6 Release 4
  • Release Date: January 2023

Overview

Pointwise is our leading mesh generation software product for CFD, encompassing nearly three decades of technology development. The product features a modern software framework and workflow and provides tools like 64-bit support, multi-threading, and Windows/Linux/Mac portability.

These release notes are provided as a reference for the new features included in the latest version of Pointwise as well as any known issues that were resolved.

New Features

  • High-order elevation and export was moved into a new Elevate task under the Grid menu. The new Elevate task also offers the following improvements:
    • Support for exporting mixed order meshes.
    • Support for exporting simultaneously to multiple CAE formats.
    • Improved efficiency and parallelization. Typical performance gains are 2-15X faster than Fidelity Pointwise 2022.1.
  • The following improvements were added to the Automatic Surface Mesh task to target undesired clustering and over-refinement:
    • Controls to specify a minimum edge length and a minimum radius of curvature (both global and per boundary edge).
    • Control to specify a target maximum aspect ratio (per mapped quilt and per boundary edge).
    • Option to use an equally spaced distribution on the short sides of mapped quilts.
    • Option to use an Adjacent Grid treatment on quilts adjacent to the long sides of mapped quilts.
    • Controls to specify a per boundary edge growth rate and number of constant growth layers.
    • A new stretching filter type that allows users to explicitly set an initial height for T-Rex on boundary edges.
  • The unstructured block smoother has been refactored to improve both performance and memory usage. The smoother is most efficiently run in multiple passes with fewer iterations per pass. Typical performance gains are 2-10X faster than Fidelity Pointwise 2022.1.
  • Added support for AVMESH V2 for Kestrel high-order export.
  • Added reporting of the displacement vector (delta) to the messages window when measuring distances in Fidelity Pointwise.
  • Added control for specifying the minimum edge length to the Automatic Surface Mesh command.
  • Updated the Automatic Volume Mesh command to apply meaningful names to newly created domains and database planes.
  • Added support for exporting files for the Fidelity PBS solver.

Resolved Issues

SPR Description
PW-21818Added support for AVMESH V2 for Kestrel high-order export.
PW-21954Fixed an issue with high-order export where the high-order points were slightly out of tolerance with the linear mesh.
PW-22821Fixed an issue that was preventing the export billion cell meshes to the Kestrel format.
PW-22235Added reporting of the displacement vector (delta) to the messages window when measuring distances in Fidelity Pointwise.
PW-23779Added control for specifying the minimum edge length to the Automatic Surface Mesh command.
PW-23950Fixed an issue where the presence of a 3dconexion mouse would cause Fidelity Pointwise to crash on macOS.
PW-23990Fixed an issue preventing an unstructured block from initializing.
PW-24173Fixed an issue where a shared T-Rex match domain was being diagonalized if both blocks had Push Attributes enabled.
PW-24199Fixed an issue that was causing meshes to be exported with hanging edges.
PW-24262Fixed an issue that was causing Fidelity Pointwise to crash during voxel block initialization.
PW-24321Updated the Automatic Volume Mesh command to apply meaningful names to newly created domains.
PW-24324Fixed an issue where cells with negative volumes were being exported for the SU2 format.
PW-24343Fixed an issue where Suggar++ overset data was not being displayed in the statistics table in Grid, Overset.
PW-24354Fixed an issue where T-Rex block initialization was causing an assert error.
PW-24415Fixed an issue where the number of model/surface entities being assembled was not reported correctly in the messages window.
PW-24440Fixed an issue where Fidelity Pointwise was crashing when using the Edit, Combine T-Rex Cells command.
PW-24448Fixed an issue where Fidelity Pointwise was crashing when running the elliptic solver if the connectors had 2 points.
PW-24454Added support for exporting files for the Fidelity PBS solver.
PW-24571Fixed an issue where block initialization was producing negative volume cells.

Previous Versions

Pointwise V18.6 R3

Platform Support

  Hardware 64-bit
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Intel
AMD
Linux
Linux
Intel
AMD
macOS
macOS
Intel

Requirements for All Platforms

Minimum Requirements:

  • 16 GB RAM (64 GB recommended)
  • 2 GB disk space (512 GB recommended)
  • Ethernet card
  • OpenGL compatible monitor with at least 1280x1024 screen resolution (up to 4K)
  • Dedicated professional graphics card supporting 3D hardware-accelerated OpenGL and 24-bit RGB double-buffering
  • OpenGL 2.0 or higher
  • Up-to-date graphics card drivers

Important Notes:

Microsoft Windows

Operating System 64-bit  
Windows 8.1 Windows 8 Compatible
Windows 10 Windows 10 Compatible

Linux

Operating System Version 64-bit
CentOS 7
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4
SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop 12.3
Ubuntu Desktop 16.04

Linux Library Dependencies

Listed below are the specific versions of library packages that we have on our test machines where we know Fidelity Pointwise works. Other dependencies (e.g. libGL) are not explicitly listed below as they should be part of any standard install that includes the packages listed below.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4

fontconfig-2.10.95-11.el7
freetype-2.8-14.el7
glibc-2.17-196.el7
libX11-1.6.5-1.el7
libXScrnSaver-1.2.2-6.1.el7
libXau-1.0.8-2.1.el7
libpng-1.5.13-7.el7_2
libxcb-1.12-1.el7
libxkbcommon-0.7.1-1.el7
libxkbcommon-x11-0.7.1-1.el7
xcb-util-0.4.0-2.el7
xcb-util-image-0.3.9-4.el7
xcb-util-keysyms-0.3.9-5.el7
xcb-util-renderutil-0.3.9-3.el7
xcb-util-wm-0.3.9-5.el7

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2

fontconfig-2.13.1-3.el8
freetype-2.9.1-4.el8
glibc-2.28-72.el8
libX11-1.6.7-1.el78
libX11-xcb-1.6.7-1.el8
libXScrnSaver-1.2.3-1.el8
libXau-1.0.8-13.el8
libpng-1.6.34-5.el8
libxcb-1.13-5.el8
libxkbcommon-0.8.2-1.el8
libxkbcommon-x11-0.8.2-1.el8
xcb-util-0.4.0-10.el8
xcb-util-image-0.4.0-9.el8
xcb-util-keysyms-0.4.0-7.el8
xcb-util-renderutil-0.3.9-10.el8
xcb-util-wm-0.4.1-12.el8

SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop 12.3

fontconfig-2.11.1-7.1
glibc-2.22-2.22-62.19.1
libX11-6-1.6.2-11.1
libX11-xcb1-1.6.2-11.1
libXau6-1.0.8-4.58
libXext6-1.3.2-3.61
libXss1-1.2.2-8.54
libfreetype6-2.6.3-7.10.1
libpng16-16-1.6.8-14.1
libpng16-16-1.6.8-14.1
libxcb-icccm4-0.4.0-1.16
libxcb-image0-0.3.9-8.60
libxcb-keysyms1-0.3.9-8.54
libxcb-randr0-1.10-3.1
libxcb-render-util0-0.3.8-8.52
libxcb-render0-1.10-3.1
libxcb-shape0-1.10-3.1
libxcb-shm0-1.10-3.1
libxcb-sync1-1.10-3.1
libxcb-util1-0.3.9-10.54
libxcb-xfixes0-1.10-3.1
libxcb-xinerama0-1.10-3.1
libxcb-xkb1-1.10-3.1
libxcb1-1.10-3.1
libxkbcommon-x11-0-0.6.1-7.4
libxkbcommon0-0.6.1-7.4

Ubuntu 16.04

libfontconfig1:amd64-2.11.94-0ubuntu1
libfreetype6:amd64-2.6.1-0.1ubuntu2
libpng12-0:amd64-1.2.54-1ubuntu1
libx11-6:amd64-2:1.6.3-1ubuntu2
libx11-xcb1:amd64-2:1.6.3-1ubuntu2
libxau6:amd64-1-1.0.8-1
libxcb-icccm4:amd64-0.4.1-1ubuntu1
libxcb-image0:amd64-0.4.0-1build1
libxcb-keysyms1:amd64-0.4.0-1
libxcb-randr0:amd64-1.11.1-1ubuntu1
libxcb-render-util0:amd64-0.3.9-1
libxcb-render0:amd64-1.11.1-1ubuntu1
libxcb-shape0:amd64-1.11.1-1ubuntu1
libxcb-shm0:amd64-1.11.1-1ubuntu1
libxcb-sync1:amd64-1.11.1-1ubuntu1
libxcb-util1:amd64-0.4.0-0ubuntu3
libxcb-xfixes0:amd64-1.11.1-1ubuntu1
libxcb-xinerama0:amd64-1.11.1-1ubuntu1
libxcb-xkb1:amd64-1.11.1-1ubuntu1
libxcb1:amd64-1.11.1-1ubuntu1
libxdmcp6:amd64-1-1.1.2-1.1
libxext6:amd64-2-1.3.3-1
libxkbcommon-x11-0:amd64-0.5.0-1ubuntu2
libxkbcommon0:amd64-0.5.0-1ubuntu2
libxss1:amd64-1-1.2.2-1

Ubuntu 18.04

libfontconfig1:amd64-2.12.6-0ubuntu2
libfreetype6:amd64-2.8.1-2ubuntu2.1
libpng16-16:amd64-1.6.34-1ubuntu0.18.04.2
libx11-6:amd64-2:1.6.4-3ubuntu0.4
libx11-xcb1:amd64-2:1.6.4-3ubuntu0.4
libxau6:amd64-1:1.0.8-1ubuntu1
libxcb-icccm4:amd64-0.4.1-1ubuntu1
libxcb-image0:amd64-0.4.0-1build1
libxcb-keysyms1:amd64-0.4.0-1
libxcb-randr0:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxcb-render-util0:amd64-0.3.9-1
libxcb-render0:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxcb-shape0:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxcb-shm0:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxcb-sync1:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxcb-util1:amd64-0.4.0-0ubuntu3
libxcb-xfixes0:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxcb-xinerama0:amd64-1.13-1
libxcb-xkb1:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxcb1:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxdmcp6:amd64-1:1.1.2-3
libxext6:amd64-2:1.3.3-1
libxkbcommon-x11-0:amd64-0.8.2-1 ubuntu18.04.1
libxkbcommon0:amd64-0.8.2-1 ubuntu18.04.1
libxss1:amd64-1-1.2.2-1

Ubuntu 20.04

libfontconfig1:amd64-2.12.6-0ubuntu2
libfreetype6:amd64-2.8.1-2ubuntu2.1
libpng16-16:amd64-1.6.34-1ubuntu0.18.04.2
libx11-6:amd64-2:1.6.4-3ubuntu0.4
libx11-xcb1:amd64-2:1.6.4-3ubuntu0.4
libxau6:amd64-1:1.0.8-1ubuntu1
libxcb-icccm4:amd64-0.4.1-1ubuntu1
libxcb-image0:amd64-0.4.0-1build1
libxcb-keysyms1:amd64-0.4.0-1
libxcb-randr0:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxcb-render-util0:amd64-0.3.9-1
libxcb-render0:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxcb-shape0:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxcb-shm0:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxcb-sync1:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxcb-util1:amd64-0.4.0-0ubuntu3
libxcb-xfixes0:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxcb-xinerama0:amd64-1.13-1
libxcb-xkb1:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxcb1:amd64-1.13-2 ubuntu18.04
libxdmcp6:amd64-1:1.1.2-3
libxext6:amd64-2:1.3.3-1
libxkbcommon-x11-0:amd64-0.8.2-1 ubuntu18.04.1
libxkbcommon0:amd64-0.8.2-1 ubuntu18.04.1
libxss1:amd64-1-1.2.2-1

Ubuntu 21.04

libfontconfig1:amd64-2.13.1-4.2ubuntu3
libfreetype6:amd64-2.10.4+dfsg-1build1
libpng16-16:amd64-1.5.37-3build3
libx11-6:amd64-2:1.7.0-2build2
libx11-xcb1:amd64-2:1.7.0-2build2
libxau6:amd64-1:1.0.9-1build3
libxcb-icccm4:amd64-0.4.1-1.1
libxcb-image0:amd64-0.4.0-1build1
libxcb-keysyms1:amd64-0.4.0-1build1
libxcb-randr0:amd64-1.14-3ubuntu1
libxcb-render-util0:amd64-0.3.9-1build1
libxcb-render0:amd64-1.14-3ubuntu1
libxcb-shape0:amd64-1.14-3ubuntu1
libxcb-shm0:amd64-1.14-3ubuntu1
libxcb-sync1:amd64-1.14-3ubuntu1
libxcb-util1:amd64-0.4.0-1
libxcb-xfixes0:amd64-1.14-3ubuntu1
libxcb-xinerama0:amd64-1.14-3ubuntu1
libxcb-xkb1:amd64-1.14-3ubuntu1
libxcb1:amd64-1.14-3ubuntu1
libxdmcp6:amd64-1:1.1.3-0ubuntu3
libxext6:amd64-2:1.3.4-0ubuntu3
libxkbcommon-x11-0:amd64-1.0.3-2
libxkbcommon0:amd64-1.0.3-2
libxss1:amd64-1-1.2.3-1

macOS

Operating System Version 64-bit
Mojave 10.14

Other Versions

Pointwise V18.6 R5
Pointwise V18.6 R4
Pointwise V18.6 R3
Pointwise V18.6 R2
Pointwise V18.6 R1
Pointwise V18.5 R2
Pointwise V18.5 R1
Pointwise V18.4 R4
Pointwise V18.4 R3
Pointwise V18.4 R2
Pointwise V18.3 R2
Pointwise V18.3 R1
Pointwise V18.2 R2
Pointwise V18.2 R1
Pointwise V18.1 R2
Pointwise V18.1 R1
Pointwise V18.0 R4
Pointwise V18.0 R3
Pointwise V18.0 R2
Pointwise V18.0 R1