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CFD General Notation System
Standard Interface Data Structures

Version 4.2

This document contains the Standard Interface Data Structures (SIDS) definitions for the CFD General Notation System (CGNS) project external link; this project was originally a NASA-funded contract under the AST program, but control has now been completely transferred to a public forum known as the CGNS Steering Committee.

The purpose of this document is to scope the information that should be communicated between various CFD application codes; the target is 3-D multizone, compressible Navier-Stokes analysis. Attention in this document is not focused on I/O routines or formats but on the precise description of data that should be present in the I/O of a CFD code or in a CFD database.

This document therefore contains a precise definition of information pertinent to a CGNS database. Specifically, the following information is addressed:

This information is encoded into C-like data structures.

This SIDS document is consistent with CGNS Version 4.2. A list of major changes for earlier versions is available. The following is the INDEX:

The complete CGNS Standard Interface Data Structures in HTML form is also available for installation on a local system. This is a gzip'ed tar file (224K, 861K gunzip'ed), and may be downloaded by clicking on the link while holding down the shift key, assuming your browser supports this capability. A dialogue box will appear for you to specify the directory and file name. To unpack the contents, do

   gunzip -c sids.tar.gz | tar xvf -
The files will be extracted and stored in the directory sids. Point your browser to the local file sids/index.html to display the CGNS Standard Interface Data Structures home page. Note also that some links, to other manuals, etc., may not work.