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Ansys Discovery
3D Simulation Software

Ansys Discovery features the first simulation-driven design tool combining instant physics simulation, high-fidelity simulation and interactive geometry modeling in a single easy-to-use experience.

UNLOCK NEXT-LEVEL PRODUCTIVITY

Ansys Discovery Reveals Critical Insights Early in the Design Process

By combining interactive modeling and multiple simulation capabilities in a first-of-its-kind product, Discovery allows you to answer critical design questions earlier in the design process. This upfront approach to simulation saves time and effort on prototyping as you explore multiple design concepts in real time with no need to wait for simulation results.

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    Easy-to-use interface
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    High-fidelity simulation powered by Ansys solvers
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    Embedded multiphysics simulation
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    First-of-its-kind live physics simulation

Quick Specs

Ansys Discovery answers critical design questions early in your process with speed and accuracy. Boost productivity and performance by eliminating long waits for simulation results. Discovery lets engineers focus on innovation and product performance. 

  • Structural Analysis
  • Topology Optimization
  • Design & Geometry Modeling
  • Fluid-solid Thermal Analysis
  • Transfer to Workbench, Mechanical, Fluent
  • Associativity to CAD
  • Filters, Screens or Perforated Plates Simulation
  • Steady-state and Transient Analysis
  • Model Prep for Simulation
  • Fluid Analysis
  • Thermal Analysis
  • Parameter Studies

Creating Surgical Solutions for Quicker Patient Recovery

Discovery speeds implant design to improve patient rehabilitation.

Discovery surgical

The phrase goes ‘Practice makes perfect’ We say ‘Iteration makes Perfection’

Discovery has made a profound impact on how we iterate quickly to create better products.

—Mauricio Toro, CEO, Techfit

Patients rely on the speed and accuracy of Techfit Digital Surgery to create implants that support healing bones. Every patient’s needs are unique, whether they're recovering from cancer or major injuries. Ansys Discovery simulation solutions can directly impact a patient’s recovery and rehabilitation. By exploring different design scenarios, engineers can validate products faster, get patients into surgery quicker and enable patients to enjoy recovery sooner. Through the Discovery software, Techfit Digital Surgery evaluates a patient's need and turns it into a design, highlighting the company’s mantra of “iteration makes perfection.” 

July 2024

What's New

Ansys Discovery’s newest 2024 R2 update accelerates geometry modeling by up to 10X, improves simulation confidence, and introduces the first full release of its breakthrough GPU meshing technology for improved accuracy and reduced memory footprint.

2024 R2 Discovery
Enhanced Modeling

Faster modeling significantly accelerates geometry editing for large models, achieving speeds 10 times faster than prior releases. Visibility improvements include new hide faces and volume clipping tools conveniently located in a dedicated ribbon group for an optimized workflow. Fast shrinkwrap offers users a new, more efficient model-wrapping process for generating closed volumes from disconnected surface models. Shared topology overlays bring visualization of shared topology connections into the Discovery graphics scene, enabling users to understand changes to connectivity while making modeling edits.

discovery-r2-2024-bike2.jpeg
Fast GPU Meshing

The fault-tolerant approach ensures that mesh failures are a thing of the past, regardless of CAD errors, overlapping parts, or low-quality surface faceting. Local Fidelity Sizes support capturing small model details, such as flow constrictions, baffles, or grates, and coarsening in low-impact areas to reduce GPU memory requirements without sacrificing accuracy.

Conformal poly-hexcore meshing ensures smooth transitions from polyhedral cells at the boundary for maximum shape capture to hexahedral cells in the interior for enhanced computational performance.

2024 R2 Discovery
Simulation Made Easy

Bolt assessment evaluates the bolt factor of safety using AISC ASD criteria, allowing for the quick identification and prevention of potential structural issues in an automated workflow. Confidence checking helps identify design or simulation setup issues by automatically validating results against standard design acceptance criteria. Mesh visualization enables rapid and interactive mesh inspection to evaluate feature capture and increase confidence in simulation results. Automated mesh quality checks and visualizations ensure you can trust and verify your results.

Discovery Applications

View all Applications
Heat exchanger simulation

Heat Exchangers

Ansys enables heat exchanger design optimization for energy efficiency, materials selection, and life prediction under harsh operating conditions.

intercooler streamlines discovery

FAQs

Ansys Discovery is a simulation-driven 3D design software tool that combines interactive modeling and multiple simulation capabilities, allowing you to address critical design challenges earlier in the product design process.

You can learn Ansys Discovery by viewing tutorials on the Ansys Discovery Forum. You can also share tips, provide feedback, and get answers to your questions.

Ansys customers can also take training courses on Ansys Discovery, such as Introduction to Ansys Discovery, Ansys Discovery in Ansys Cloud, and Ansys Discovery for FEA Geometry Preparation.

Yes. You can import a variety of models from CAD packages such as AutoCAD, CATIA, SolidWorks, and more. To see which CAD packages are supported, view our complete list.

You can request a 30-day free trial of Ansys Discovery here: 

 

Upfront simulation is a design process that uses simulation to reduce prototyping and testing  and minimizes engineering change orders while maximizing design and ideation focus. Discovery's GPU live solver allows you to explore different design ideas in real-time with instantaneous results.

Yes. You can open, repair and edit any CAD file in Ansys Discovery. Discovery's direct modeling technology is faster, easier, and more flexible than any other 3D modeling tool.

DISCOVERY CAPABILITIES

Upfront Simulation Speeds the Innovation of Product Design

By answering critical design questions early in the process, thus decreasing engineer labor and physical prototyping costs, Ansys Discovery allows for a ROI boost across your organization. Upfront simulation reduces prototyping and testing needs and minimizes engineering change orders while maximizing design and ideation focus.

Ansys Discovery 3D product simulation software allows engineers to quickly prepare models for simulation or create design variations, all while rapidly exploring multiple design concepts with real-time interactivity. Upfront simulation improves product insight and leads to a more efficient and higher-performing outcome.

Discovery Simulation

 

Key Features

Simplify your 3D modeling and simulation tasks with a range of Discovery software capabilities.

With the interactive nature of Ansys Discovery, engineers can test several design ideas in mere seconds, receiving immediate insights on the structural performance of a design. Expect to quickly observe the different modes of vibration and receive a rapid understanding of resonant frequencies. Discovery removes barriers that previously prevented engineers from using engineering simulation. Instead of dealing with the difficulty of performing structural analyses on complicated geometry, Discovery enables near-instant simulation results once loads are established.

Whether you’re addressing internal or external flow, you can explore a variety of fluid wonders. Incorporate porous media into your analysis when applicable. When you’re ready for additional detail and higher accuracy, use the Ansys Fluent solver within the Discovery environment, without changing your model or your workflow.

The speed of the Ansys Discovery topology optimization tool is extremely handy, but the interactivity of the tool for generative design — the first-ever offering of its kind — means engineers can easily evaluate a wide-ranging spectrum of product behaviors to uncover the perfect design solution. Topology optimization capabilities account for manufacturing constraints and can apply to multiple load cases and physics, including modal and structural simulations, giving Discovery additional uses across multiple product designs.

The real-time heat flow and temperature distribution information enables you to test ideas in real time, iterating and ideating along  the way to find the best solution for your design needs. Leverage conjugate heat transfer (CHT) to determine fluid and solid temperatures for evaluating fluid and thermal performance of product designs. Solve a wide range of product design challenges with multiphysics simulation capabilities across numerous industry applications.

The ability to create and edit geometry remains critical to design exploration. The Ansys Discovery software makes those tools available within all parts of the workflow. Engineers can edit the shape of a model while viewing results and watch the simulation immediately update. Leverage native CAD models from a vast range of sources and update simulations with new versions when changes come. Geometry modeling offers a fresh take on simulation speed with a focus on final solutions. 

Quickly observe the impact of antenna locations and receive a rapid understanding of problems. Whether you have a basic CAD model or one with 1000 threaded screws, there’s no need to simplify your CAD geometry. With fast, direct geometry editing powered by Ansys SpaceClaim, adjust the antenna location in real-time and instantly see the impact. 

Get to know the best solution for your project by studying how changes to geometry or physics input parameters change the results. Using parameter studies — also known as parameter sweeps — the design studies create a Pareto frontier of data in Ansys Discovery, meaning you can explore a large number of design possibilities by automating multiple geometric or simulation parameters. The simple process allows you to choose input parameters so you’re evaluating ideas simultaneously. With Discovery’s processes automated, expect to rapidly try new ideas, obtain fresh results and better understand trends and trade-offs to fit within your design goals.

DISCOVERY PACKAGING & LICENSING

Ansys Discovery License

The Ansys Discovery license provides access to a broad set of modeling and physics simulation capabilities, including geometry modeling tools for cleaning, defeaturing and editing imported models;  as well as generating new geometries to support simulation workflows; live physics simulation capabilities including thermal, structural, fluids and topology optimization; and simulation setup and post-processing functionality.

Solving high-fidelity simulation in Ansys Discovery  requires an additional license, depending on the physics. To leverage the Ansys Mechanical Solver for structural and thermal physics requires the Mechanical Pro license; whereas solving fluid physics requires the CFD Pro license.

Product Packages

Ansys Discovery Capability

Discovery Modeling

Discovery Simulation

Open Data from All Major CAD Systems  
Modify Imported Geometry  
Defeaturing and Simplification Tools  
Model Repair  
Repair and Edit Faceted Data  
Geometric Parameterization  
Scripting  
Transfer to Mechanical  
Transfer to Fluent  
Simulation Setup & Pre-processing  
Post-processing of Results  
Static Structural  
Modal  
Point Masses  
Pre-stressed Modal  *
Linear Frictionless Contact  
Nonlinear Contact & Joints  *
Large Deformation  *
High Frequency Electromagnetics  *
Topology Optimization  
Manufacturing Contraints for Topology Optimization  
Steady-state Thermal  
Conduction  
Convection  
Transient Thermal  
Steady-state Flow  
Transient Flow  
Incompressible Flow  
Buoyancy - Boussinesq  
Thermal Serface Loads (convection, heat)  
Thermal-stress  
Transfer to HFSS  
  * Requires additional license

DISCOVERY RESOURCES & EVENTS

Featured Webinars

Inverted Train
Breaking the Barrier with Simulation Driven Design

We'll explore how Discovery breaks stereotypical simulation barriers, ideally suited for early design exploration and refinement.

Discovery Webinar Series
Discovery Webinar Series

Learn how Discovery can help you improve effectiveness across valves, address structural simulation challenges, overcome thermal management issues and perform topology optimization and much more...all in 17 minutes.

Ansys Discovery What's New
Ansys 2023 R1: Ansys Discovery What’s New

Ansys 2023 R1 expands Discovery’s Live physics, innovative user experience, and robust modeling tools, making it a critical piece of the Ansys digital simulation thread and the best place to start simulation for every engineer and analyst.


White Papers & Articles

Ansys Discovery Simulation

The Four Benefits of Simulation-Driven Design

This report presents the business benefits of taking a simulation-driven design approach, enabled by engineers, across the design cycle.


Videos


Ansys software is accessible

It's vital to Ansys that all users, including those with disabilities, can access our products. As such, we endeavor to follow accessibility requirements based on the US Access Board (Section 508), Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and the current format of the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT).

See What Ansys Can Do For You

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