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Thermal engineering has long been left out of the concurrent engineering environment dominated by CAD (computer aided design) and FEM (finite element method) software. Current tools attempt to force the thermal design process into an environment primarily created to support structural analysis, which results in inappropriate thermal models. As a result, many thermal engineers either build models “by hand” or use geometric user interfaces that are separate from and have little useful connection, if any, to CAD and FEM systems. This paper describes the development of a new thermal design environment called the Thermal Desktop. This system, while fully integrated into a neutral, low cost CAD system, and which utilitizes both FEM and FD methods, does not compromise the needs of the thermal engineer.

RadCAD™1 is a PC based radiation analyzer program that combines a modern graphics based user interface, advanced computational algorithms, and sophisticated CAD techniques into a single integrated environment. This paper presents RadCAD's development status and describes newly implemented features.