Conversion of ASTER GDEM data for CFD Analysis

Question

I need to do a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of wind over a large area of land. I have obtained the necessary tiles from the ASTER GDEM data set (in .tif format) and was wondering how I would go about converting this data into a 3D model which would be accepted by a CFD package such as ANSYS Fluent.

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

I have no idea what file format ANSYS uses, but last time when i had to convert DEM files to 3D surface i used FME (Feature Manipulation Engine). (FME is a commercial program by Safe Software) GRASS and QGIS may have feature, usually GRASS has everything, but it's hard to use.