This, is the official MegaCads homepage from DLR (Germans National Aerospace Research Center).
MegaCads is part of the MEGAFLOW project and it is used to generate structured multiblock Navier-Stokes grids for high Reynolds-number flows.
MegaCads is an interactive grid generation system (no automation) with a few simple CAD functions, which enables the user to build block boundaries, distribute points on them, create surface grids and fill volume blocks with grids, based on simple representations of shapes through the use of basic objects like polygons and splines in 2D and 3D. The resulting algebraic grids can be smoothed using elliptic or biharmonic techniques. The whole design is done in a parametric fashion and each design step is stored in a script file. Using the built in restart capability, it is possible to change parameters and replay the script file. For further information see the documentation or click here.
Because people might be interested in generating structured grids manually, we make MegaCads-2.5 executables freely available in the Internet.
07/11/2001 : Release 2.5 will come in 4-6 weeks
07/11/2001 : We are integrating parabolic 2d/3d functions
07/11/2001 : We have integrated IO functions to connect MegaCads and the hybrid grid generator Centaur, so that non interactive MegaCads can be used to automatically modify geometries and use them for automatic hybrid grid generation
07/11/2001 : We are integrating tetrahedral grid generation to connect structured hexas with outer tetra elements
07/11/2001 : Now MegaCads runs again on our SuSE Linux cluster using 7.1
glibc 2.2, Kernel 2.2.18, Metrolink Motif 1.2
XFree 4.1.0, Nvidia
We will distribute the Linux version again when 2.5 is finished
05/31/2001 : > 420 downloads
02/17/2001 : > 360 downloads
08/07/2000 : Currently, the Linux version is not available because it does not run on other machines than ours.
09/07/2000 : > 300 downloads
09/01/2000 : Linux version is not available
06/26/2000 : The Linux version seems to work with SuSE >= 6.3 only.
05/25/2000 : The Linux version does not work properly.
05/15/2000 : The new MegaCads version 2.4 is available for SGI and Linux. Only a few tests have been performed for the Linux version.
05/10/2000 : The download is not possible for 2-3 hours.
04/10/2000 : > 240 downloads of MegaCads.
02/03/2000 : Server should run again. New Linux version which works for glibc is nearly finished.
01/17/2000 : Download Server update: We are installing a new ftp server for download. Ftp service will not be available for approx. one week.
12/08/1999 : Server problems: we moved into a new building in November and had some problems with the server and the network. Now everything should work again.
10/19/1999 : Currently, we focus on the integration of new control techniques from Dr. P. Niederdrenk, IGES import, and chimera. MegaCads 2.4 will we available propabley at the end of this year.
09/14/1999 : We still have problems with MegaCads and Linux (glibc)! Currently it does not work properly. It may take a few weeks to trace the bugs because the Linux version currently does not have the highest priority. Please, use other versions if possible.
09/01/1999 : Current number of downloads since March 1999 : 150
08/27/1999 : Linux version: we have some problems compiling a new MegaCads version
08/11/1999 : We have got the new Metrolink Motif version for Linux and are going to compile a new Linux version
06/10/1999 : We are still waiting for the new Motif version to compile a new Linux version of MegaCads
03/09/1999 : The current free version MegaCads 2.29 does not offer an IGES input which works properly. Point data is needed as input.
03/08/1999 : The online tutorial is old and explains only the basic ideas. Please, use the tutorial from the directory TUTORIAL when you have installed MegaCads. The tutorial is in german, but the commands are in english (e.g. File/Input, Cad/Normal etc.). The tutorial is not sufficient to learn 3d grid generation for complex configurations.
03/07/1999 : As soon as the S.u.S.E.
6.0 version is installed
on our Linux machine and Motif is avialable for the new lib's,
we will compile a new version and make it available. We did not
expect that user would prefer the Linux version and did no testing
using different Linux distributions.
03/03/1999 :
Although we did a lot of testing, there are still some bugs
which may cause segmentation faults (see
Release notes).
Currently, we heard from users that there are some problems
with the Linux version. We tested it (not our complete test matrix,
due to memory limitations on our Linux PC) using
S.u.S.E. Linux > 5.3,
Metrolink Motif 2.0 and
Mesa 2.6/3.0 .
To our knowledge it does not work with lesstif. We currently
also get information that problems occur using RedHat Linux.
We will work on that.
03/03/1999 :
After selecting a project (File/Project) File/Init has to be selected once
to initialize internal variables. Otherwise strange things may happen.
If you have any questions or comments, send your email to :
Megacads Development Team
O. Brodersen
DLR, Institute of Design Aerodynamics
Lilienthalplatz 7
D-38108 Braunschweig
Germany