Fidelity Pointwise Release Notes

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

Overview
New Features
Resolved Issues
Platform Support
Previous Versions

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

Previous Versions

Pointwise V18.6 R3

Platform Support

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

Pointwise does not support 32-bit platforms.
Pointwise does not support remote execution. However, a FAQ with remote execution workarounds is available.

Microsoft Windows

Operating System	64-bit
Windows 8.1
Windows 10

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

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