Computational Model Builder (CMB): A Cross-Platform Suite of Tools for Model Creation and Setup

Abstract

The US Army Engineer Research and Development Center researches, develops, supports, and maintains many discipline-specific numerical models. Because of the increasing domain size and resolution needs of the modeling applications, it is no longer feasible to execute the pre- and post-processing of the models, such as mesh generation, boundary condition assignment, and visualization, on a single-processor desktop computer. Thus, a cross-platform suite of tools, the Computational Model Builder (CMB), is being developed to allow modelers to create scenes, generate solids from the scenes, and assign boundary conditions and materials on the solids. This greatly reduces the memory footprint of the problem from that required for manipulation of a full three-dimensional mesh, allowing pre- and postprocessing to be performed easily on a desktop. The tagged geometry can then be sent to HPC machines for mesh generation. This paper will discuss the requirements and design decisions for the CMB framework.