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Design Manager
Design Manager provides an automated approach within Simcenter STAR-CCM+ to run design exploration studies. Design exploration covers both performance assessment and optimization.
Design Manager Workflow
The following steps outline the recommended workflow to set up, run, and post-process a design study in Design Manager.
Creating a Design Manager Project
The process for creating a Design Manager project is integrated within the same user interface as you use for a Simcenter STAR-CCM+ simulation.

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Design Manager
Design Manager provides an automated approach within Simcenter STAR-CCM+ to run design exploration studies. Design exploration covers both performance assessment and optimization.
- Study Inputs
  In Design Manager, study inputs are parameters that you define in the reference simulation and that Design Manager can modify during design studies.
- Study Outputs
  For each design simulation in a design study, Design Manager allows you to record and write specific outputs.
- Surrogate Models
  In Design Manager, a surrogate is a predictive function that returns an estimated response value for a given set of numerical input parameters. Design Manager computes surrogate functions by fitting data from design study simulations to chosen surrogate models such as Kriging or Least Squares.
- Study Types
  Design Manager offers several types of design study by which you can explore the design space of your product.
- Study Runs
  Design Manager allows you to run design studies on your local workstation or on a high performance cluster. You can run the design simulations sequentially or concurrently, in serial or in parallel. In addition, you can customize the simulation run by inserting Java macros that contain additional setup for the simulation. Design Manager optimizes runs by caching meshes and reusing them where possible.
- Study Analysis
  Design Manager provides post-processing capabilities by which you can analyze the outputs of a design study.
- Design Manager Licensing
  The licenses that are required for running a design study in Design Manager depend on the type of study and the specified run settings. Also, different steps within the Design Manager workflow have particular license requirements.
- Design Manager Workflow
  The following steps outline the recommended workflow to set up, run, and post-process a design study in Design Manager.
  - Setting Up the Reference Simulation
    Every design study requires a reference simulation from which to start. In this reference simulation you create and expose the design and global parameters by which Design Manager can modify the simulation setup. You also prepare reports, plots, and scenes for feedback and analysis.
  - Creating a Design Manager Project
    The process for creating a Design Manager project is integrated within the same user interface as you use for a Simcenter STAR-CCM+ simulation.
    - Saving, Closing, and Loading a Design Manager Project
      The Design Manager project settings are stored in a separate file, called Design Manager project file (*.dmprj).
    - Updating a Design Manager Project
      As you set up a design study, you are likely to find that you require other parameters, reports, scenes, or plots from the reference simulation. You can not create these object in the Design Manager project. Instead, you must go to the reference simulation directly.
    - Setting Up Simulation Effect for Simulation Parameters
      The Simulation Effect of a simulation parameter indicates how the parameter affects the simulation. To optimize the design exploration process, where two or more designs have the same Geometry and Meshing parameters, the mesh is computed only once and then reused for all of the similar designs. The mesh is cached and reloaded when required, instead of being computed repeatedly.
  - Setting Up a Design Study
    Setting up a design study requires that you choose the type of study, set its properties, and choose appropriate input parameters and responses. Additionally, you choose scenes and plots that you want Design Manager to export from each design simulation.
  - Running a Design Study
    Design Manager provides various settings to control the run of a design study and the compute resources to use.
  - Monitoring a Design Study
    In the GUI, you can check the progress of a running design study in the progress and status bar beneath the explorer window. You can also view post-processing objects while a design study runs, allowing you to view progress interactively.
  - Analyzing the Design Study Results
    Design Manager provides a number of post-processing elements by which you can examine the results of a design study. For each design study type, Design Manager gives you a pre-configured design study dashboard that contains the most relevant elements for the study type. Design study dashboards are built on the layout view mechanism within Simcenter STAR-CCM+.
  - Generating and Applying Surrogate Models
    A study runs significantly faster when you compute responses using surrogate models instead of simulations. In Design Manager, a typical application for surrogate models is a Robustness and Reliability study with a large number of sample points in the design space.
  - Analyzing the Design Study Results
    Design Manager provides a number of post-processing elements by which you can examine the results of a design study. For each design study type, Design Manager gives you a pre-configured design study dashboard that contains the most relevant elements for the study type. Design study dashboards are built on the layout view mechanism within Simcenter STAR-CCM+.
  - Launching Design Manager in Teamcenter
    Teamcenter is a product lifecycle management tool, in which you embed and monitor multidisciplinary development stages of a product—from geometry construction, flow analysis, thermal management to material selection. As part of design exploration, Teamcenter supports the creation, modification, and execution of design studies using Design Manager.
- Design Manager Reference
  The following properties and right-click actions are available for a Design Manager project.
- Troubleshooting Design Manager
  If you encounter problems when setting up or running a design study, check these common problem scenarios for advice on how to proceed.

Creating a Design Manager Project

The process for creating a Design Manager project is integrated within the same user interface as you use for a Simcenter STAR-CCM+ simulation.

Design Manager requires that the Design Manager project is located in the same file folder of the reference simulation.

There are two ways to create a Design Manager project:

Method Procedure

Creating a Design Manager project from the reference simulation

In the Simcenter STAR-CCM+ simulation tree, right-click the root node and select Create Design Manager Project.

The Design Manager object tree appears. Parameters, reports, scenes, and plots are transferred from the simulation to the Design Manager project.

Note	When the reference simulation is located on a remote server (for example on a Linux cluster), this option for creating a Design Manager project is disabled. You must use the method described below.

Creating an empty Design Manager project and reading the reference simulation

Launch Simcenter STAR-CCM+.
Click (Create a File).
In the Create a File dialog, set the following properties:
- Type: Design Manager Project
- Command: For the Unlicensed Design Manager Server scheme, add -dmnoshare, see Design Manager Options.
  Example: starccm+ -server -cpubind -rsh ssh -dmproject -dmnoshare
  
  For default licensing, no additional argument is necessary.
Click OK.
The Design Manager object tree loads.
Right-click the Simulations node and select Read Reference Simulation....
In the Select Reference Simulation dialog, browse to the corresponding directory, select the reference .sim file, and click Open.
Click OK.
While Simcenter STAR-CCM+ reads the reference simulation, it launches a server process. The relevant contents of the simulation file are read in to the Design Manager project.
If the Design Manager server runs on the remote machine (for example on a Linux cluster), it enables remote browsing for the reference simulation file. No further SSH configuration is required.

See also:
Running on a Linux Cluster Using General Job Submission

Example: The screen-shot below displays the Design Manager object tree after transferring parameters, reports, scenes, and plots from a reference simulation.