Thermal Desktop is the prefered tool used at NASA Langley for analyzing problems that include orbital conditions. The program is equipped with planetary data for the nine planets, as well as the moon. This allows you to quickly set up an orbit around a specific planet and run a transient simulation of the solar heating on the spacecraft. Thermal Desktop uses a Monte-Carlo ray trace method in order to calculate the solar flux impinging on the vehicle, which is faster that running a direct viewfactor analysis in Patran on a large model. Thermal Desktop consists of the Thermal Desktop module for visualization and model-building, the RadCAD module for radiation and orbit development and visualization, and the thermal solver engine SINDA/FLUINT. Many options are designed to make the thermal analyst's life easier, such as the ability to add MLI (multi-layer insulation blanket), heaters, thermostats, etc; single-click display of material properties, optical properties, and active sides; heat pipe and thermo-electric cooler options; orbit visualization and post-processing by orbit step; ray-trace visualization; and articulated geometry and tracking (such as for solar arrays).
At the current time, Thermal Desktop cannot import Pro-E files directly, which is a concern since most of LaRC-generated geometry is available as Pro-E files. However, you can create an IGES or STEP file from the Pro-E file and import that into Thermal Desktop, or pull in a NASTRAN or ANSYS mesh (see Importing Into Thermal Desktop for more information). We hope to see Cullimore & Ring increase the solid geometry handling capabilites of Thermal Desktop in the future, as well as develop a robust meshing feature.