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Kit-CAE 2.0#

Kit-CAE is a reference application that demonstrates the capabilities of OpenUSD, CUDA-X libraries, and NVIDIA Omniverse for engineering data workflows. It provides tools for importing, exploring, and visualizing engineering simulation data in OpenUSD. Engineering outputs stay in their native formats (CGNS, HDF5, VTK, EnSight, NumPy) while OpenUSD provides the composition layer. Data is read on demand through pluggable data delegates, and GPU-accelerated operators handle data processing and visualization.

How This Guide Is Organized#

Each page in the main guide explains a capability of Kit-CAE and includes a hands-on Try It section that walks through each capability using a single CFD dataset (vehicle aerodynamics). The Try It sections build on each other. Start with Getting Started to clone and build Kit-CAE, then follow these pages in order:

Main Guide#

  1. Import Data

  2. Explore Your Data

  3. Create Sources

  4. Create Operators

  5. Color and Rendering

  6. Flow Visualization

Examples#

The Examples are self-contained and independent of the Try It walkthrough in the main guide. Each one covers a different domain or advanced workflow:

What’s New in 2.0#

Operators

  • Restructured Create menu: clear separation between Sources (immutable helpers like bounding boxes), Operators (dynamic visualizations that re-execute on stage reload), and Flow (particle-based animation)

  • Per-operator control: choose compute device, enable or disable execution, select specific field components, and lock property values to prevent re-execution from overwriting them

  • Multi-seed streamlines: place multiple seed sources on a single Streamlines operator without manual merging

  • Biplane/Triplane Slice: create two or three orthogonal slice planes in one step

  • Reproducible voxelization: voxelization settings are stored on the prim — the same stage always produces the same result

Format Support

  • OpenFOAM import: OpenFOAM datasets can now be imported directly

  • EnSight and VTK improvements: EnSight Gold supports polyhedral elements with faster re-reads; VTK imports are faster with a new optimized reader

Performance

  • GPU-accelerated statistics: bounding boxes, field ranges, and histograms are computed on the GPU for faster interaction with large datasets

  • Ahead-of-time kernel compilation: visualization kernels compile once and are cached, reducing startup time on subsequent launches

  • Time series import: scale and offset controls map simulation time steps to USD time samples for smooth animation and interpolation

Usability

  • CAE Insights: inspect field array metadata, quartiles, and histograms directly in the Properties panel; updates automatically with timeline changes

  • Stable movie capture: the capture system waits for all CAE computations to finish before recording each frame

  • Improved Flow defaults: Flow voxelization ships with sensible defaults and skips data that is already voxelized

  • Persistent settings: preferences are simplified and carry across sessions

  • Z-up by default: the default up axis is now Z, matching CAE industry convention

Note

Legacy CAE menus are disabled by default in 2.0. If you open a stage created with an earlier version, it still works. You can re-enable legacy menus in Preferences.