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SHD SimSHD Sim CFD
Draft. This manual is new and still being checked against the software as it is verified. Some pages will change. If something here does not match what you see, the software is right — tell us and we will fix the page.

Installation

SHD Sim CFD is a desktop application for Windows. Everything it needs to solve a case — including the solver core — is inside the installer. There is nothing else to install, no WSL, and no Linux machine.

System requirements

Section titled “System requirements”
Operating system Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
Memory 8 GB minimum. 16 GB recommended past roughly 2 million cells
Disk ~4 GB for the application and its bundled solver, plus your cases
Graphics Anything with OpenGL 3.3. The viewport is not GPU-hungry

Memory is the constraint that bites first. Meshing holds more in memory than solving does, so a case that solves comfortably can still fail to mesh.

Install

Section titled “Install”
  1. Download the installer from shd-sim.com/download.
  2. Run it. It installs per-machine and needs administrator rights once.
  3. Start SHD Sim CFD from the Start menu.

There is no account required to download, and no email wall. The free tier runs every analysis type up to a 250,000-cell mesh — see Licensing and activation.

The portable build

Section titled “The portable build”

A .zip is published alongside the installer. Unpack it anywhere and run the executable — nothing is written outside the folder except your cases and settings. Use it when you cannot install software, or to run a specific version alongside your normal one.

Where things go

Section titled “Where things go”
Application C:\Program Files\SHD Sim CFD\
Your cases Wherever you put them. The application does not impose a workspace
Settings and licence Per-user application data

Cases are ordinary folders. Nothing about a case is locked to the machine that made it, and nothing needs the application to read it — the case directory is an OpenFOAM case, and the results are OpenFOAM results.

Uninstalling

Section titled “Uninstalling”

Standard Windows uninstall. It removes the application and the bundled solver. It does not touch your cases, which are wherever you saved them.

If you are moving to another machine, deactivate the licence first from the licence panel, or from your account at account.shd-sim.com — a seat that is still held by a machine you no longer have is the most common support question.

Verifying the install

Section titled “Verifying the install”

Open the application and use Worked example from the home screen. If the example loads, meshes and runs, the install is complete and the solver core is working. That takes a few minutes and is a better check than anything the installer can report.

If it does not, see Troubleshooting.