Free guides from Volupe’s engineers
Simcenter STAR-CCM+ tutorials
Free tutorials for Simcenter STAR-CCM+, written by the application engineers who answer our support cases and teach our courses.
62 tutorials
Grouped in nine topics
From getting around the software to Java macros, free to read with no login.
11 courses
Simcenter STAR-CCM+ training
Run by Volupe, from the introductory course to multiphase flow and automation.
Smart Expert
Support from engineers
Siemens-certified expertise, and a Top European Partner award for customer support.
Where are the official STAR-CCM+ tutorial files?
Siemens’ own tutorials are part of the Simcenter STAR-CCM+ user guide. The guide is installed with the software: press F1 or the “?” button in the GUI to open it in your browser.
If you are a Volupe customer and cannot find a file, ask our support team at support@volupe.com. More about the documentation: Simcenter STAR-CCM+ documentation: a guide to success.
What Simcenter STAR-CCM+ doesTo work through a tutorial you also need its input files. You can get them in three ways.
One tutorial at a time
Recent versions of the online user guide let you download the input files for each tutorial separately.
The full package
The complete tutorial package for your version is in the download section of Siemens Support Center, under related files and documentation. It is large (more than 10 GB), but it also holds the final results files, so you can compare your run with Siemens’ own.
The PDF user guide
Support Center also has the user guide as one PDF of more than 12,000 pages, if you prefer to read offline.
Tutorials
STAR-CCM+ tutorials by topic
Each guide takes one part of a simulation, such as prism layers, interfaces or residuals, and shows the settings that matter in the software.
Start hereNew to STAR-CCM+? Begin with Siemens’ official tutorials in the user guide, then our guides on residuals and coupled solver settings, or take our introduction course.
Getting around the software
- Simcenter STAR-CCM+ documentation: a guide to success. Open the user guide from the GUI with F1, see what it covers, and find the model, solver and field function references.
- Simulation guide in Simcenter STAR-CCM+. What the built-in Simulation Guide is and how it can lead you through a set-up.
- Custom trees. Collect the objects you edit most in a custom tree, and stop scrolling through the whole simulation tree.
- Reset the GUI. Three ways to bring a misbehaving GUI back to default: from the GUI itself, by deleting the Star directories, or from the command prompt.
Geometry and surface preparation
- Faster geometry creation. Quick ways to build simple geometry, in 3D-CAD and directly in the main GUI.
- Splitting faces in 3D-CAD. Four ways to split a face: by UV point, by edge projection, by edge points and by sketch imprint.
- Tessellation, CAD projection and CAD Boolean. What each one does to your geometry, and when you need it.
- Surface repair. The Surface Repair GUI, the tools that close free edges, and how to manage views while you fix a surface.
- Surface wrapper defeature and contact prevention. Keep the wrapper from merging parts that should stay apart, and control how much detail it removes.
- Gap closure in the surface wrapper. Close the gaps in a leaky geometry, shown on a car.
Meshing
- Prism layer settings: tips and tricks. What gap fill percentage, minimum thickness percentage and layer reduction percentage do to your prism layers, tested one at a time on the same case.
- Overset mesh. Create an overset region and control how it behaves when the body moves, with example files.
- Directed meshing. What the directed mesher is and how to sweep a mesh through an example geometry.
- Directed mesher with an existing source mesh. Use a mesh you already have as the source mesh, shown on a U-pipe and on a rod with a square cross-section. Example files included.
- Meshing a cylinder. Compare base mesh types for a cylinder: the polyhedral generalised cylinder mesher and the directed mesher with quadrilateral or polygonal cells.
- Conformal meshing. The prerequisites for a conformal mesh between parts, with one example using the directed mesher and one using the extruder.
- Surface and volume extruders. Create extruders, set up the volume extruder and combine several of them.
- Thin mesher. The expert properties of the thin mesher for thin solid parts.
- Finding zones that give a poor volume mesh. Spot problem areas before you mesh, using proximity, dihedral angle and cell quality.
Interfaces and boundary conditions
- How to work with interfaces. Boundary mode or contact mode? A side-by-side comparison of the two ways to set up interfaces, with the simulation files to try it yourself.
- Contact-mode interfaces. The connectivity and contact types behind them: conformal, non-conformal imprint and non-conformal mapped contacts.
- Pressure outlet options. The backflow specification (direction, pressure and scalars when flow comes back in through the outlet) and the pressure outlet option.
- Parabolic inlet profile. Define a parabolic velocity profile with a local coordinate system and a field function.
- Inlet flow with a spread angle. Two ways to spread the flow at an inlet: with a field function, or with a rounded inlet boundary. Example files included.
- Tables as boundary conditions. Get the .csv format right, import the table, turn it into a field function and apply it at a boundary.
- Porous baffles. Define baffle properties and calculate the resistance parameters, for shear stress or resistance based baffles.
- Pressure drop and reference density. The pressures STAR-CCM+ reports, what the reference density changes, and how to set up pressure drop reports. Example files included.
Can’t find your topic?
More STAR-CCM+ topics, release news and other Simcenter tools are in our technical blog. If you are a Volupe customer, you can also ask our support team at support@volupe.com.
Solvers and convergence
- Coupled solver settings. What the coupled solver does, how the continuity convergence accelerator (CCA) and automatic CFL work, and how the settings compare on the same case.
- Residuals. What residuals are, how the normalisation options change them, and how to judge convergence, also for transient runs.
- Coupled solver settings and template. Tune CFL and CCA to improve a first coupled-flow run, ending in a best-practice template.
- Locate high-residual cells. Find the cells where the solution struggles, so you know where to look in the mesh or set-up.
- Monitors. Multi-valued monitors and the monitor manager, and how multi-valued monitors can speed up a run with many monitors.
- Initialising from an existing solution. Extract field values to a table and use them as initial conditions for a new run.
Motion and rotating machinery
- Rigid body motion and moving reference frame. Model a rotating flow with RBM and with MRF, compare the results and see when to use which.
- From MRF to RBM with stages. Switch from MRF to RBM within one run, shown on a propeller, and the catch: it does not work with DFBI motion.
- Morphing. Set up a morphing motion and use point sets to stop distortion where you do not want it.
- Overset mesh in close proximity. What happens when overset regions get close, and how overset zero gap handles it, in four examples. Example files included.
- Motion Preview. Check that a motion is set up right before you spend solver time on it.
- Boundary interface caching. Speed up simulations with rotating bodies: how the caching works and how it performs.
Physics set-up
- CHT with simulation operations. Set up a conjugate heat transfer case with an explicitly mapped interface and a simulation operation.
- Heat transfer coefficients. The heat transfer coefficient, its local, specified y+ and virtual local variants, and the external coefficient you set at a convection boundary: what each one reports.
- Time step in a transient CHT analysis. Find the limiting time scale with the Courant and Fourier numbers.
- Surface-to-surface radiation. The radiation models, view factors and radiation patches, with a result for the environment boundary condition.
- Choosing a turbulence model. Pick a starting turbulence model and wall treatment for your case.
- Choosing a multiphase model. How phase interaction topology and flow regime point you to the right model.
- Fluid-structure interaction. Set up an FSI case: meshing, interfaces, boundaries, motions and the structural side.
- Acoustic simulations. Set up the tree in the GUI, post-process the acoustic results and run a mesh study for fans.
- Transition modelling. The types of laminar-turbulent transition, how STAR-CCM+ models them, and tips for the set-up.
Post-processing
- Streamlines. What streamlines show, how to define them and how to animate them.
- Annotations. Create annotations and pick the right type for labels and values in your scenes.
- Resampled volumes. Create a resampled volume, display fields on it and work with its data.
- Plotting along a circular line. A cylindrical coordinate system, a line from intersecting derived parts, then the tangential plot, step by step.
- Wall-adjacent field values. Extract values from the cells next to a wall, with the heat transfer coefficient as the example.
- Symmetric and periodic results. Show the full domain from a symmetric or periodic model with idealizations and transforms.
- Screenplay. A short introduction to Screenplay for animating your results.
- Advanced rendering, part 2. Import CAD and combine displayers into a rendered image of your results.
Field functions, templates and automation
- Field function syntax, part 3. The insidePart, distanceToPart and distanceToSurface functions and what you can do with them.
- Field function syntax, part 1. Basic syntax, and expressions in a local coordinate system.
- Field function syntax, part 2. Ramp the time step, interpolate table values and combine interpolation with a conditional statement.
- Wake field plots with a Java macro. Probe a wake field with derived parts, then automate the job with a Java macro you can download.
- Templates and ini-files. Global parameters and the ini-file, two building blocks for reusable simulation templates.
- Tags in templates. Use tags to drive mesh operations in a template, step by step.
- Running Design Manager projects. Direct submission, batch runs without a queue system, and the General Job Submission and Pre-Allocation modes on a cluster.
From the blog
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Next steps
Beyond the tutorials
Instructor-led
Learn with an instructor
Our Simcenter STAR-CCM+ learning path has eleven courses. It starts with a four-part introduction and continues with meshing, post-processing, heat transfer, multiphase, marine, turbomachinery and automation, online in Microsoft Teams or at our office in Gothenburg.
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Live and recorded
Free webinars
We also run free Simcenter webinars, live and on demand.
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Quotes
Simcenter STAR-CCM+ price and licensing
Simcenter STAR-CCM+ licences are quoted for your set-up: the licence term, the number of users, add-ons and how you license computing power.
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Case studies
Featured success stories
How our customers have used Simcenter software, and our support, in their projects.
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Onboarding
How to get started
How we onboard new users of Simcenter STAR-CCM+, step by step.
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STAR-CCM+ tutorial questions
Your STAR-CCM+ specialist
Robin Victor
Senior Application Specialist, M.Sc.
Robin has written 100+ Simcenter STAR-CCM+ articles.
We reply within one day.
Is there a free STAR-CCM+ tutorial?
Yes. Every guide on this page is free to read, with no login. Siemens’ official tutorials come with the STAR-CCM+ user guide, so if you have the software installed you already have them; the input files are in the online user guide and Siemens Support Center. We also run free Simcenter webinars, live and on demand.
Where can I download the STAR CCM+ tutorial files?
From the online user guide or Siemens Support Center. Recent versions of the online user guide let you download the input files for one tutorial at a time; the full tutorial package for your version, with final results files, and the PDF user guide are in the Support Center download section.
Which tutorial should I start with?
Start with the official tutorials in the user guide, which take you through complete simulations with ready input files. Once your own cases run, our guides on residuals and coupled solver settings help you judge and improve convergence, and the guides on interfaces and contact-mode interfaces help when you connect regions. For a structured start with an instructor, take our introduction course.
Can I try STAR-CCM+ before I buy?
Book a demo and tell us what you need to simulate. One of our engineers shows the software on a case like yours, and in the same meeting we can discuss whether a trial makes sense for your evaluation.
Talk to an engineer in your region
Every Volupe business developer holds an engineering degree. Find your regional contact below, or send us a message.
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- A reply within one day.
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- A quote, demo or other next step that fits your enquiry.
After purchase: support from Volupe simulation engineers.