EnSight CFD 2.0 has been released

CEI is announcing the release of EnSight CFD 2.0. It features volume rendering and session files and a Cocoa Mac version. CEI has also created a new website for EnSight CFD, www.ensightcfd.com.

But perhaps the most interesting addition to EnSight CFD 2.0 is a free version. The free version has some limits in file size (number of elements), doesn't read all the same data formats, and has a small watermark on the screen. But other than that, and lack of access to personal support, seems to be comparable to the paid version. See this comparison chart between EnSight CFD's free and paid versions.

CEI didn't have to make a free version to appeal to their current EnSight customer base since its possible to run EnSight CFD using a current installation and license of EnSight, for no additional cost. Its just a Window > Interfaces > EnSight CFD menu pick. EnSight CFD is not targeted to the current EnSight customers.

How does EnSight CFD compare to EnSight Lite or Standard or Gold?

EnSight CFD lags behind classic EnSight versions such as Lite, Standard, Gold, and DR in terms of high end features like batch mode, client-server, python scripting, command window, variable field calculator, keyframe animation and more. See this feature list. But according to the marketplace EnSight CFD is pretty comparable or beyond to other applications which have been at the lower level of capability to classic EnSight. And for the price of free it seems worth looking into.

It's clear that CEI is pursuing a strategy of serving the whole range of the CFD post-processing market from students and newbies to CFD with EnSight CFD priced at free to the high end with EnSight Gold and EnSight DR serving the supercomputing community at $10,000/year. And it seems that CEI has decided to make its free version of EnSight CFD as its lead marketing pitch. Maybe TV ads are not as cheap as has been reported in the news.