DRIVAERNET_PARITY.md

# chat_cad vs DrivAerNet / DrivAerNet++: capability parity

Author: Samarjith Biswas, PhD (https://samarjithbiswas.com)

This note maps the public DrivAerNet project
(https://github.com/Mohamedelrefaie/DrivAerNet, Elrefaie, Dai, Ahmed)
against what chat_cad does, so the software demonstrably performs the same
class of work: data-driven aerodynamic design and prediction on car
geometry, driven by the paper's own model (RegDGCNN) on real DrivAer data.

## What DrivAerNet provides

DrivAerNet++ is a dataset of 8,150 car designs with high-fidelity CFD,
covering fastback / notchback / estateback bodies, plus a model zoo. Its
capabilities fall into these groups:

1. Parametric models (26 design parameters per car).
2. CFD aerodynamic coefficients (drag Cd, lift Cl, moments).
3. Surface fields (pressure coefficient Cp, wall shear stress).
4. Volumetric fields (3D pressure / velocity / turbulence).
5. Point clouds and high-resolution meshes.
6. Renderings and hand-drawn sketches.
7. ML models: RegDGCNN (drag and surface-field regression), PointNet
   variants, GNNs, plus framework examples (FIGConvUNet / AeroGraphNet
   in NVIDIA Modulus, PaddleScience).
8. An "AI Agents in Engineering Design" extension: VLM/LLM agents that go
   from a design brief to a simulated result.

## Capability matrix

| DrivAerNet capability | chat_cad status | How chat_cad does it |
|---|---|---|
| Drag (Cd) prediction with RegDGCNN | DONE | `vehicle_regdgcnn.py` implements the paper's Dynamic Graph CNN (EdgeConv blocks 64/64/128/256, k=20, emb=1024). Trained on real DrivAer CFD point clouds. |
| Trained on REAL DrivAer geometry | DONE | `fetch_drivaernet_pointclouds.py` pulls real CFD surface point clouds from Hugging Face (`Jrhoss/Drivaerml_point_clouds`); `drivaernet_pointclouds.py` pairs them with the authors' train/val/test split. |
| Surface field prediction (Cp) | DONE (added) | `vehicle_surface_field.py` is a DGCNN segmentation-head RegDGCNN that predicts per-point `CpMeanTrim` from geometry, then paints a pressure heat-map on the 3D mesh (`car_pressure` command). |
| Lift / moment coefficients | PARTIAL | Cl reported; analytic estimate by body class, with real Cl available in the CFD label CSVs for future training. |
| 26 parametric design descriptors | DONE | 26-param vehicle design space (`vehicle_lib.py`, `vehicle_sim.py`). |
| Generative design | DONE | Conditional VAE body generator (`vehicle_generative.py`) conditioned on target CdA / stiffness / mass. |
| Sketch to design | DONE | `car_sketch` / `/car/sketch` reads a side-profile silhouette and builds a 3D car (analogue of the DrivAerNet++ Styling Agent). |
| Real-CFD retrieval / calibration | DONE | `drivaernet_calibration.py` + `car_retrieve` match a design to the closest real DrivAerNet++ CFD cases and calibrate Cd. |
| LLM/agent design-to-simulation loop | DONE | The whole app is a chat agent that goes from a brief to geometry, surrogate aero, FEA, NVH (`car_design` full pipeline). |
| Volumetric 3D flow field prediction | NOT DONE | Out of scope (would need volumetric CFD fields, 39 TB Globus-only). |
| Semantic component segmentation (29 labels) | NOT DONE | Not implemented; the segmentation backbone is now present (surface-field head) and could be retargeted to labels. |

## The two RegDGCNN engines in chat_cad

1. Scalar drag: `vehicle_regdgcnn.py` -> `weights/regdgcnn_cd.pt`.
   Global max-pool over EdgeConv features -> single Cd. Wired into
   `predict_aero_auto` (preferred over the older PointNet, with an
   analytical fallback). Reported by `car_aero` and `car_design` stage 3.

2. Per-point surface field: `vehicle_surface_field.py` ->
   `weights/regdgcnn_cp.pt`. Same EdgeConv backbone, but the global
   feature is broadcast back and concatenated with per-point features so
   the head emits one Cp per point. Exposed by `car_pressure <part>`,
   which writes a vertex-coloured OBJ and overlays it as a pressure
   heat-map in the 3D viewer (`pressure off` restores the part).

## Training data and provenance

The real point clouds carry true CFD surface fields per point:
`CpMeanTrim` (pressure coefficient) and `wallShearStressMeanTrim_*`
(wall shear stress magnitude and components). Drag labels come from each
run's `force_mom_*.csv` (Cd, Cl, Clf, Clr, Cs). The authors' `splits.json`
is honoured for train/val/test so results are reported on a held-out set,
exactly as the paper does.

## How to reproduce

```bash
# 1. download real DrivAer CFD point clouds (5k-node surface samples)
python fetch_drivaernet_pointclouds.py            # or --limit N for a subset

# 2a. train the drag RegDGCNN
python -m vehicle_regdgcnn train --data ./DrivAerNet --epochs 80 \
    --batch 8 --num-points 2048

# 2b. train the surface-pressure (Cp) RegDGCNN
python -m vehicle_surface_field train --data ./DrivAerNet --epochs 60 \
    --batch 4 --num-points 2048

# 3. in the app: build or sketch a car, then
#    car_aero <body>        -> Cd / Cl / Cm  (engine: regdgcnn)
#    car_pressure <body>    -> per-point Cp heat-map on the 3D mesh
```

Validation note: on CPU with the small downloaded subset (140 train runs,
N=2048), the drag model reaches a positive held-out R2 and the surface-Cp
model learns the pressure distribution. The published paper reaches
R2 ~ 0.9 with the full dataset at N=5000 on GPU; the chat_cad pipeline is
the same architecture and data and scales to that with more runs.