The latest CAPOST available at our software distribution page has a number of minor enhancements and bug fixes, including the ability to better visualize the fluid front in a contour plot by shading the liquid front, as shown below:

Check out the CHANGELOG in the software distribution area for a complete list of changes.

Domain Decomposition

CAPCAST's thermal package, CAP, is very efficient in terms of speed and memory usage. However, the GNU FORTRAN compiler has limitations. For example, g77 on 32-bit machines can only use slightly more than 1 GB of memory. This limits the size of the finite element model we can analyze on our LINUX workstations - i.e., we can only use approximately 6 million nodes in our models. This is adequate for most analyses, but occasionally the user needs to create a mesh larger than this to adequately model a complex process. To this end, we have developed a new version of CAP, which uses the technique known as Domain decomposition. This technique allows CAP to separate the casting elements and the mold surface elements from the rest of the mold elements. Thus, instead of solving one large problem, CAP now solves two sub-set problems simultaneously. This allows CAP to utilize more computer memory and also decreases the computational time for huge models. Lastly, implementing domain decomposition is the first step to utilizing parallel processing.

CAPCAST on 64-bit Hardware

For quite some time now we have seen very little development of traditional 32-bit x86 processors. Increases in clock frequency of Intel and AMD's x86 processors has appeared to reached a plateau, and 32-bit machines inherently have a memory limitiation of 4 GB. The industry is turning more and more towards the use of 64-bit processors.

In our pursuit of a stable, economical, and well supported 64-bit system, we've recently ported our CAPCAST software package to the x86-64 (AMD Opteron) architecture running LINUX. With the x86-64 architecture you have the option of running either 32-bit or 64-bit applications. As stated above, CAP compiled using GNU FORTRAN on the x86 architecture is limited to approximately 6 million nodes, which utilizes 1 GB of memory space. Running in 64-bit mode, the only limitation we currently have is dependent on the actual memory available.

We have also done some initial work on porting CAPCAST to run on Apple's 64-bit G5 computers, and we anticipate a smooth transition to Intel's 64-bit Itanium machines.

Did You Know?

Did you know that there are three different ways to store the current rotated view in CAPOST and MESHID?

• 'On the fly' - press the right mouse button anywhere in the drawing area to popup the 'Rotate' menu, and select 'View: Store' to store the current rotated angle coordinates. To return to these coordinates later on, press the right mouse button again and select 'View: Restore'.
• Orientation files - This method is similar to 'On the fly', except for it allows you to save the rotated angle coordinates to small files so that you can access multiple views. To use orientation files, select 'File: Orientation: Read / Write Orientation'.
• View files - This method includes the current active (or painted) elements along with the rotated angle coordinates. These files are naturally larger than orientation files, yet they do store this data in as compact a form as possible. To use view files, select 'File: Orientation: Read / Write View'.

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