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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.
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+.
Creating Design Plots
Design plots are two-dimensional graphs that allow you to display the relationship between variables from a design study.

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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.
  - 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+.
    - Tabulating Designs with an Output Table
      In Design Manager, output tables allow you to tabulate the designs of a design set and their properties in the Graphics window. You can also export the designs of a design set to a *.csv table file.
    - Visualizing Scenes and Plots defined in the Reference Simulation
      When each design simulation completes, Design Manager exports chosen scenes and plots and makes them available for you to view.
    - Creating Design Plots
      Design plots are two-dimensional graphs that allow you to display the relationship between variables from a design study.
      - Creating XY Plots
        XY plots are two-dimensional graphs that allow you to display the relationship between design variables. You can create XY plots before you run a design study or while it is running, and when it is complete. If you create an XY plot before you run the design study or while it is running, it is updated continuously as the study progresses.
      - Creating Parallel Coordinates Plots
        Parallel Coordinates plots are two-dimensional graphs that allow you to display the relationships between multiple variables at the same time. You can create Parallel Coordinates plots before you run a design study, while it is running, and when it is complete.
      - Importing External Data into Plots
        Within design manager you can import a .csv file and use this to plot multiple data series on the same plot as well as overlay different plotting methods.
      - Creating Pie Charts
        Design Manager provides you with a pie chart view of the design feasibility of a design study, both during and after the design study has run.
    - Asynchronous Post-Processing
      Design Manager allows you to create additional post-processing objects in a single simulation (design or reference) after a design study has been run, and then executes an update on all designs so that their simulation files also receive the additional objects. This methodology works best when you save the simulation files for each design.
    - Exploring the Analysis in Design Manager
      Follow these steps to assess the design connectivity between output tables, snapshots, and project plots.
    - Exporting 2D Field Data to Simcenter Reduced Order Modeling
      From Design Manager you can export scalar scenes to create image-based Reduced Oder Models (ROM) in Simcenter Reduced Order Modeling.
    - Analyzing the Results of a Design Study in HEEDS|post
      HEEDS|post is a plotting and graphing package that offers enhanced post-processing capabilities for your design studies. You can analyze the study results in HEEDS|post while the study is running, as well as when it completes.
    - Launching HEEDS|post
      You can launch HEEDS|post from Design Manager and analyse the exported results of a design study in HEEDS|post.
  - 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 Design Plots

Design plots are two-dimensional graphs that allow you to display the relationship between variables from a design study.

You are advised to create plots directly from a design study.

Right-click Design Studies > [design study] and select Create Plot to choose one of the available plots for this design study.
Depending on the study type and plot type, a pre-populated plot setup dialog opens in which you select objects to plot.
The example below is for a performance plot from a smart sweep study:
Set the plotting properties within the Plot Setup Dialog. See: Plot Setup Dialog Reference.
When creating a specific design plot from the Plots node of the design project, there are three categories of plot type: