STAR-CD software from CD-adapco is used for industrial CFD simulation. All versions of STAR-CD products (STAR-CD 3.x, STAR-CD 4, and CCM+) export to the EnSight format directly, i.e. an option is provided in the product to output data into EnSight Case format. In addition, EnSight supports the polyhedral cell shapes used by STAR-CD products. EnSight also supports the reading of STAR-CD particle track files. Contained within $CEI_HOME/ensight82/translators/starcd_file33 is a conversion routine to convert STAR-CD particle track files (.trk) to either steady state or transient into EnSight measured data.

Users of STAR-CD will find significant benefits of including EnSight in their analysis process such as dynamic and interactive streamlines, keyframe animations, dynamic section cuts, multiple variable displays in a single window, multiple viewports (windows) that are each interactively updated, flow feature extractions, and many others.

EnSight’s command script language permits batch operation, allowing integration into typical techniques used by STAR-CD users. In addition, EnSight can be driven through python scripts, allowing further integration into a batch or customizable environment. 

"We can read in everything from STAR-CD into EnSight, and even extract certain data not otherwise available,” says Francisco Campos, a consultant and CFD engineer for Icon.  “The impact of droplets on the surface, statistical quantities, droplet size and volumes – all of this can be brought into EnSight for high-end visualization.”

Application Stories

New Visualization Methods help Audi Get a Clearer Picture of Vehicle Soiling

Color Palattes and Tutorials

Download the STAR-CD color palettes in EnSight format
Insert these color palettes into your .ensight8/palettes/ directory to color your geometry with the same color scale used by Pro-Star.

STAR-CD to EnSight Script Documentation

Exporting STAR-CD transient results to EnSight
This tutorial illustrates the typical commands used in pro-STAR to export your model to EnSight format, as well as loading these files into EnSight, and illustrating the ease of analyzing transient models. Dynamic and interactive analysis and 3D animations can be created within EnSight.

STAR-CD Particle Track information into EnSight

Each EnSight installation includes a conversion routine to turn STAR-CD particle track files into a format that EnSight can read. Once converted, this information reads directly into EnSight where it can be viewed, analyzed, and interrogated just like other data. You can change size of the particle (either constant or based on a variable), as well as the color of the particles based on any of their variables. This process works the same whether the solution domain is steady state or transient, in both instances the particles come into EnSight as a time dependent solution.

Prostar/STAR-CD export to EnSight

This tutorial illustrates two different methods for exporting your steady state model from Prostar/STAR-CD into EnSight. Both methods write EnSight Gold case format files, and both methods work with for both the Prostar 3x and 4x families. The first method shows you how EnSight Files are generated by using the automatic routines within the NavCenter. This method is easy, but does not allow the user much control. The second method uses both SetFile, to control which parts are written to EnSight, and the separate “ensi” commands, to control which variables get exported to EnSight. 

Knowledge Base

This section below searches the Knowledge Base for information about using EnSight with STAR-CD: