Ansys BladeBuilder is an add-in of Ansys Discovery for preparing blade geometry for analysis. BladeBuilder can load blade geometry from an NDF file; such a file is text-based and can be produced from your own script or exported from Ansys BladeEditor. The basic blade shape must be specified by profile point data. Some other geometric features, such as blade ends, can also be specified in the NDF file. For details on NDF files, see Turbomachine Neutral Data Format Reference.

Once you have a blade in BladeBuilder, you can use it as you would any geometry created in Ansys Discovery. For example, you can produce a mesh for the solid region and then perform a structural analysis using Ansys Mechanical. In addition, you can use BladeBuilder to export the geometry to Ansys TurboGrid to produce a mesh for the fluid region and then perform a fluid flow analysis using Ansys CFX or Ansys Fluent.