Displaying Particles

For fluid flow simulations, particles show individual particles flowing through the volume. Unlike streamlines, by default, particles are uniformly seeded across the entire volume.

  1. In the Results arc, click Particles to display how particles flow through the fluid.
  2. To emit particles from an inlet, click the Emitter control. An emitter, represented by a spherical marker with a bounding ring, is added to the first inlet where particles will travel from that seed location.
    To emit particles from a different location, click and drag the emitter to the desired location.
  3. To include additional emitters, click Add emitter. The new emitters will be added to subsequent inlets and finally offset from one another at the last inlet. A maximum of 10 emitters can be added.

    You can add emitters to multiple selected geometries.

    To place an emitter anywhere on your model, select any geometry (except bodies) as the location and right-click to choose Add a Particle Emitter from the context menu.

    Note: When adding an emitter to a line, Discovery uses the length of the line as the radius and the normal to be the starting point.
  4. Select a variable from the Results legend list to color your particles by a different variable.
    You can display particles colored by Velocity, Pressure, Temperature, or Vortices Lambda. Temperature is only available if you have added a temperature condition, and Vortices Lambda is available only in Explore.
  5. Analyze and display your results in different ways using the particles options.
    Range Clips the displayed results when you move both ends of the slider. Particles with data outside the range are not displayed. This option is available when emitters are not active in the model.
    Number Changes the number of emitted particles when the emitter is included.
    Size Changes the particle size.
    Animation speed Speeds up or slows down the animation of the particle display.
    Color Turns on or off particle colors.
  6. Modify the particles by clicking the marker and using the Move handles to move it along the axes. Click and drag the bounding ring to change its size and in turn the density of particles displayed.
    Restart the emitters as needed and Reset to the default emitter to relocate emitters to their original position. Additional emitters will be removed.
    To remove emitters, click the spherical marker and right-click to select Remove Emitter from the context menu.