Discussion Forum

I've heard that 4.0a will be released in less than 3 months (not from official source).

What were the disappointing parts in Comsol 4 for you?

well , to be specific and
as silly as it sounds, report generator is a major feature for me. I am an independant consultant and the automically generated report are of great help for me as a support to communicate with my customers with minimal loss of time in putting together the data. I think that the lack of this feature alone is going to prevent me for using 4.0 for my prfessional work [ I wonder if I could use 3.5a along 4.0 with my license but I think that the answer is No except if Comsol aknowledge that 4.0 is still in a defacto beta form...

Beyond that I also happen to use a lot Min Max marker... not there either

I am also using a lot PDE mode with ale and weak form/constraint. a few warning in the release note have me wondering if I will be able to run the case I use to run on 3.5a in 4.0 but the jury is out on this one .... I will have to dig deeper.

And reading through all the features that were available in 3.5a and will be available in future release but NOT on this one sent me the red alarm "beta version" unfinished work ....
and have me wondering about the other issues still undocumented...

I understand that developping code is hard work and requires time but I think the marketting around this version was too agressive compared to what the released product really is.
Again I love comsol and I am sure 4.x will be great piece of code sometime down the road...
but I am VERY unhappy at 4.0 "as it appear to me to be ..... simply unfinished....but released nevertheless

Hi

I would say take it a look first. Wen I tested one of the betas earlier this year, I found the report generator far more usefull than in 3.5 (as this is also where I loose a lot of time), the mesh generator rerun really usefull and time saving, again. What I saw and tested of the weak form is there, but I agree there are quite some "new" ways to do things, but the product as a hole is far more streamlined w.r.t physics and not so much applications with interlaced almost identical physics. Clear every thing wanted is not yet there, for those in Fluidics I believe they will have to wait as their revolution is for next updates.

Finally so long we run 3.5 and/or 4 on the same PC I do not see why COMSOL should not allow us to have both versions, you can open two sessions today, that is more a licence manager issue. Anyhow that is not in my hands, but clearly I cannot make a direct non reversible jump, as we leave our projects normally for their full 2-3 years lifecycle with the same software version, so I need to have several version in parallel, but use one at the time

I'm still confident, but I agree I'm still waiting for my DVD, got my new PC though, 1kW in my office, I'm going to have a hot summer, but its quite OK just these days ;)

Have fun Comsoling
Ivar

I agree with Ivar.

Things are much more streamlined, specially mesh, geometry, solver sequences, plots, ... It was such waste of time to redo them each time in C3.5.

Boundary conditions, coupling terms, and specially lovely visual equations are really refreshing and easy to understand. Weak terms, fsi, and reacf stuff are a bit tricky, as the documentation is not very clear on how to use them. Though, it took me some time to find/learn them on 3.5 as well.

So far so good. FSI forces were calculated wrong, and with the new hotfix I hope they are fixed too. Running a test now.

update: after hotfix it started crashing. looking into it.

Jean,

The interface in v 4.0 is VERY different from 3.5a. It will take a very long time to learn, find where things are, and become proficient in using it. I would say, yes, load it in and plan to spend some time learning it, but keep 3.5a if you want to get any work done in the meantime.

There are a number of useful features that haven't yet been implemented (no cntrl-Z, cntrl-Y, cntrl-C, cntrl-V), but I assume they will be added in a future release. The Matlab interface isn't yet quite up to speed. It would have been nice for such basic things to be in the initial release, though.

I state here that I greatly appreciate the Comsol team on releasing 4 series and thank their hard work. Nevertheless, I mention what I see so far:

1. The help files are not ready for applications. They are good in that you get an initial idea of what something does, but that's it. Take i.e. Fluid-structure interaction. You will see what FSI boundaries are. But, how you should actually use them is not there. You're left to many hours of trial and error. Comsol support is not responding unfortunately.

2. It is not clear what is implemented completely and what partially, compared to 3.5a. A chart would have been great. Clearly some models are missing from the modeling library. To my experience, anything with ALE is not there. Simple ALE models I did also do not work. So, is ALE there completely? I don't know. (I know weak boundaries in ALE are not there. check.)

3. Plots are great. you don't have to redo some step many times.

4. Matlab interface. Quite a learning curve, but very much simplified and meaningful than before. I could start using it but boy it seems it will take some time to get to the power I had in Comsol 3.5. Also some useful functions are not there: flim2curve, ...

5. The GUI is also great. However, probably thanks to Java it is slow in reacting to changes in layout (open help, close tabs,...). I am sure Comsol guys can come up with some optimization tricks for us to run it as smooth as before.

6_Minor. Views are great concept, but tricky. I would've loved to have the views stick to what they were defined. If you use zoom, the coordinates in view change. Also, plot while solving zoom is refreshed on the next step. So, you can not zoom somewhere and let the simulation run, and then change the zoom. Also, zoom to active objects could been great. Also, when I have probe plots, they are shown together one after each other when simulating. Probably I should learn how to keep them in separate tabs.

Final point: Please more C4 models and better documentation. The rest we can learn and adapt in time.

Following my comments on this thread, I received the following information from my Comsol sales representative that I believe I can share with you here

quote:
"...Just to give you a quick update: currently our plan is to release version 4.0a in the summer (finalized as early as mid June - though
reaching the customers somewhat later), and version 4.1 in the Fall (close to the Users Conference date)..."
end of quote

I really appreciated this feed back [ so Comsol employees are really reading us..lol]
and it means that I will play with 4.0 on my "free time" until I feel confortable with the switch from 3.5a. I assume the license manager will be able to manage the 2 licenses in parallel during that time.
Until then, I will stick to my initial instinctive reaction, based SOLELY on the reading of the publicly reeased note for 4.0

4.1 will be the next really useful version for production work after 3.5a

again I really appreciated Comsol communication on that matter.
they just have a lot of work on their plate...

JF