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MCAD-driven CFD proves popular in Europe

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Mar 14, 2007

Blue Ridge Numerics has enjoyed sustained year-on-year growth over the past five years with business growing by a total of 390%.

Blue Ridge Numerics grew its business in Europe by 57% in 2006.

The company has enjoyed sustained year-on-year growth over the past five years with business growing by a total of 390%.

Blue Ridge Numerics has been listed on Deloitte's Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology companies in America, for four consecutive years.

Founded in 1992, Blue Ridge Numerics was the first computational fluid dynamics (CFD) company to develop upfront CFD software designed to meet the needs of mechanical design engineers.

With its flagship product, CFdesign, Blue Ridge Numerics took a strategic decision to sidestep the CAD-embedded approach in favour of a discrete software application that works associatively with all major MCAD applications.

Recognised for this MCAD-driven paradigm and innovative automation techniques, CFdesign provides a total product performance picture without the time and expense of building and testing physical prototypes.

The ability to conduct extensive trade-off studies early on in the design process leads to substantial downstream benefits such as increased quality and innovation and reduced time to market.

"Our global business continues to grow at four times the industry average", says Blue Ridge President Ed Williams.

"We built Blue Ridge Numerics on a belief that there was a genuine need among multi-tasking engineers for software that would allow them to solve complex fluid flow and heat transfer problems".

"Our user profile is an engineer with reasonable MCAD skill and strong knowledge of the products they engineer but who simply doesn't have time to be expert in fluid and thermal dynamics".

"The continued success of our business proves that we were right".

More than 1500 engineers completed a CFdesign training course during 2006.

The two-day course furnishes multi-tasking engineers with the knowledge and skills to effectively use CFdesign upfront in the product development process.

"It's great to see the enthusiasm in a classroom of engineers as they discover they can perform CFD analysis themselves", says Williams.

"At the end of day two they have all the skills needed to solve complex fluid flow and heat transfer problems".

For every engineer trained in the CFdesign Fundamentals course, Blue Ridge estimates there are at least four more using the software without the benefit of formal training.

"It's gratifying to know CFdesign is simple enough to learn and use without attending a course", said Williams.

"However companies that invest in training certainly achieve the greatest productivity and profit gains from the software".

Blue Ridge Numerics is targeting global growth of 47% in 2007 and European growth of 75% thanks to expanding direct sales operations in the UK, France and Germany, and a maturing network of reseller partners in Scandinavia, Benelux, Italy and other Southern European countries.