Starting a Simcenter STAR-CCM+ Simulation

Simcenter STAR-CCM+ is a client-server application. That is, the interactive user interface is a client process that connects to a server process running on the same machine or on a remote machine. The server process hosts the simulation. Changes that you make through the user interface are transmitted immediately to the simulation held by the server process.

To start a simulation interactively you first launch the client and then start a server. For this tutorial, you start both processes on the same machine.
  1. Launch Simcenter STAR-CCM+ using the appropriate instructions for your operating system.

    After a brief display of the splash screen, the Simcenter STAR-CCM+ client user interface opens. This interface to the Simcenter STAR-CCM+ software is a self-contained graphical user interface (GUI) with panes and subwindows. Some of the GUI terminology is shown in the following screenshot.



  2. To start a server process for the simulation:
    1. From the menu bar, select File > New.

      The Create a File dialog appears.

      For this tutorial, a single process running on the same machine is sufficient. If you wanted to run the server process on multiple cores, (as a parallel simulation), you would choose one of the other options under Process Options.

    2. In the Create a File dialog, click OK.

    A new window containing a simulation object tree appears in the Explorer pane, with the name Star 1.

The tree represents all the objects in the simulation. Nodes are added as you progress through the stages involved in setting up a simulation. Many steps require you to select nodes in the tree and do one of the following actions:

  • Set properties for the node in the Properties window.
  • Right-click to expose an action menu and choose an option.
  • Drag objects to other tree nodes or onto an open scene in the graphics window.

To modify the properties of an object, click its node once to select it. In the Properties window you can either set property values directly or click the Property Customizer button to the right of the value and use the property-specific dialog that appears.



The triangle next to a node indicates that child nodes exist below the node—you can click the triangle to expand and collapse the child nodes.

Before proceeding, save the simulation:

  1. To save the simulation:
    1. Select File > Save As.
    2. Navigate to the directory where you want to locate the file.


    3. In the Save dialog, type bluntBody.sim into the File Name text box and click Save.
    The title of the simulation window in the Explorer pane updates to reflect the new name.