Tutorials
Start to finish, one geometry, every click. A tutorial is for somebody who does not yet know what questions to ask, so it makes every decision for them.
Every tutorial must run verbatim, or say in its first paragraph which tier it needs. One that hits the 250,000-cell free cap halfway through is worse than no tutorial at all.
Rated like SimScale rates theirs, because it is genuinely useful and costs nothing: Easy needs no CFD background beyond knowing what you are looking at; Moderate assumes you have meshed something before; Advanced assumes you can read a residual plot and argue about turbulence models.
| Tutorial | Level | Teaches | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flow over a cylinder | Easy | The whole workflow on a case that meshes in seconds. Vortex shedding is visible, so a wrong answer is obvious | Free |
| Flow in a pipe | Easy | Internal flow, wall functions, y+ | Free |
| External aerodynamics on a body | Moderate | Refinement regions, boundary layers, drag decomposition | Free to follow; paid for a mesh worth defending |
| Heat sink, conjugate heat transfer | Moderate | Multi-region, solid and fluid together | Paid |
| Dam break, free surface | Moderate | VoF, transient control, why gravity is not optional | Paid |
| Mesh independence study | Moderate | Three simulations, one case, the Comparison node | Free |
| Rotating machinery with MRF | Advanced | Cell zones, rotating frames | Paid |
On the tier column
Section titled “On the tier column”The free tier is not only a cell cap. It allows five analysis types — Incompressible, Compressible, Convective Heat Transfer, Solid conduction and Scalar transport — and blocks cell zones, which multi-region and rotating-zone cases both need. Three of the seven tutorials above therefore need a paid licence to solve, and each says so in its first paragraph rather than partway through.
Every gate is reported on the Problems tab before a run, never as a disabled control, so a case can always be built and inspected on the free tier even when it cannot be solved.
Reading order
Section titled “Reading order”Start with the cylinder. It is the shortest case that produces an answer somebody can check by eye — if the wake is not shedding, something is wrong, and no plot is needed to see it. That property is worth more in a first tutorial than coverage.
Then the mesh independence study, which reuses the cylinder case and turns its answer into a result. Everything after that can be read in any order.