STEM Racing · F1 in Schools · 2027 season
A wind tunnel for every STEM Racing team.
WindCanvas is a real-time wind tunnel that runs in the browser on the laptops your school already has: no installs, no student accounts. Every registered STEM Racing team can have a free licence for the 2027 season.
Guides for teams and judges below, and a one-page summary for coordinators.
Free for registered teams
A free licence for every team.
Every team registered for a STEM Racing or F1 in Schools competition in the 2027 season, in any country, can have a free WindCanvas Maker licence.
Who qualifies
Teams registered for a STEM Racing or F1 in Schools competition in the 2027 season: regional, state, national or world finals, anywhere in the world. One licence per team.
What you get
A Maker licence for up to three of the team’s computers: High and Ultra resolution and 3D above Low, grid refinement around the body, SVG, DXF and PDF drawings and 3D models (STL, OBJ, PLY, glTF and GLB), project files, and reports without the watermark.
How to claim it
- Email us with your team name, school, country and registration. The button below fills in the email.
- We check the registration and reply with a link to your free licence.
- In WindCanvas, click the plan badge at the right of the top bar (Free · Upgrade), paste the key and choose Activate.
For teams
WindCanvas in your engineering portfolio.
A design-and-test workflow your judges can follow and check. The menu names are the app’s own.
- Step 1
Start from a side view of your car
Open Import and click Drop files here or click to browse, or drag the file onto the app. A photo or a sketch works in the free version; with the team licence, an SVG or DXF side view exported from your CAD model gives an exact outline.
- Take any wheels out of the outline: drag the Ground line up to the underside of the body, or paint them out with Erase. In a 2D side view, solid wheels seal the gap under the car and distort the forces.
- Check that the dialog says it looks like a car. It then ticks Mount on ground and faces the car into the wind; if the nose still points right, click Flip to face the wind.
- Check the Real length (0.21 m for a 210 mm car; the dialog guesses it from the closest preset, so check it on every import) and set Gap to your real ground clearance in metres (0.005 for 5 mm).
- Tick Apply recommended tunnel & flow (it starts unticked outside Beginner mode), then Add to tunnel: the tunnel is sized for the car, with air at 20 m/s, about race speed, over a moving floor. Leave the tunnel alone from then on.
No side view yet? Start from Presets → Automotive → STEM Racing car: a generic 210 mm car with front and rear wings, not any team’s design or one season’s rules. The sliders button on its card sets the ground clearance and the front- and rear-wing angles.
- Step 2
Change one thing at a time
Nose, front wing, rear wing, the rear of the body: change one thing and keep the length, gap and speed the same. Edit in the tunnel with Erase and the Brush, or redraw and import again with the same Real length and Gap, Replace current reference body ticked and Apply recommended tunnel & flow unticked, so the tunnel stays identical. Let each version run for about two minutes (longer at High resolution, see Step 4), then read Drag in the status bar three times and average.
- Step 3
Compare the versions
Switch the mode to Enthusiast. In Analysis, under Compare snapshots, click Take snapshot for each version, then tick up to four: the table shows Cd, Cl, L/D, the Reynolds number and the fidelity of each, with the percentage change from the first. Sweeps of wind speed or a preset parameter (Engineer mode) need a Pro licence, which we give as a competition prize.
- Step 4
Check the fidelity grade
The status bar says how far to trust a run (excellent, good, fair or rough), and Analysis → Fidelity gives the score out of 100 and what limits it: cells across the body, simulated against real Reynolds number, blockage and convergence. With the team licence, Apply recommended tunnel & flow also sets Resolution (in the Tunnel tab) to High for an imported car: in our test that doubled the cells across a 210 mm car, from 16 to 31, and both versions graded B. High takes about ten times as long as Medium to run, so give each version about five minutes before you read Drag.
- Step 5
Save the evidence
Project → Save writes a
.windcanvasproject file (team licence) that a judge can open in the free browser version and run again. Make report in the top bar produces an A4 report with the set-up, every coefficient with its fidelity grade and simulated Reynolds number, charts, flow pictures, warnings and your snapshot comparison. Save it as PDF for the portfolio. - Step 6
Go 3D with your CAD model
With the team licence, Import 3D model takes STL, OBJ, PLY and glTF or GLB files: set the Up axis, Flip nose so it points left, the Units or Real length, and Mount on ground, then click 3D in the top bar. A laptop’s 3D grid puts about 16 cells across the car, so compare 3D versions with each other rather than quoting their drag.
Our test, in numbers
A 210 mm car body imported from a side view, 5 mm above a moving floor, air at 20 m/s, and the STEM Racing car preset as it loads, measured with WindCanvas 1.3.1:
| Version | Free version (Medium) | Team licence (High) |
|---|---|---|
| Imported car, original | Cd 1.38, grade C | Cd 1.35, grade B |
| Rear lowered, tail tapered | Cd 0.86 (−37 %), grade C | Cd 0.93 (−31 %), grade B |
| STEM Racing car preset | Cd 0.88, grade C | Wandered 0.6–0.9, grade C |
The tapered tail won by about a third at both resolutions, even though the tapered car’s own number moved by 8 % between them: quote the direction and the rough size of a change, and check the ones that matter at the higher resolution. At High the preset’s reading never settled: for eight minutes it wandered between about 0.6 and 0.9, and the app kept saying its averages were still settling. In a case like that, report the range, and trust only differences bigger than it. The simulated Reynolds number matched the car’s real one at that speed, 2.9 × 105 (2.7 × 105 for the preset at Medium). A 2D run of a car always loses fidelity points, and grade C still supports comparing versions. Its drag coefficient reads high because the tunnel sees an infinitely wide car: compare versions, and don’t quote the number as the car’s Cd.
Honest limits
- WindCanvas is for comparing designs and understanding the flow, not for certifying a car’s drag.
- A 2D side view leaves out the flow round the sides and the wheels; use 3D to check the important changes.
- Ignore lift when the ground clearance spans only a few grid cells: the flow under the car is not resolved.
- Parts thinner than about three grid cells, such as a thin wing seen side-on, are unreliable.
- Use it alongside full CFD and physical testing, and say so in the portfolio. The benchmarks are on the accuracy page.
For judges
Reading a WindCanvas report.
Every report states how far to trust its own numbers. Five things to check, then what counts as a fair claim.
Check these first
- Fidelity grade (front page and Validation & fidelity). The report spells out what each grade supports: A, quantitative comparison within the stated caveats; B, comparing design variants, with absolute values possibly 10–20 % from experiment; C, trends only; D, qualitative only.
- Resolution and cells across the body (Setup). Below about 40 cells across the body the report says so. The free version’s Medium grid put about 16 cells across our 210 mm test car; High, with the team licence, about 31.
- Reynolds number, simulated and physical (front page). When the simulated value is far below the physical one, the simulated air behaves as if it were more viscous than real air. For a 210 mm car at 20 m/s the two match or come close.
- 2D or 3D, blockage, gap and wind speed (Setup and Geometry), and the Warnings list.
- The “WindCanvas Free” mark only means the free version made the report; it computes the numbers the same way, at up to Medium resolution.
Fair claims
- “Version B has about a third less drag than version A”, when both ran in the same tunnel at the same speed, gap and resolution, with similar grades, and the difference is bigger than the spread of repeated readings.
- Flow explanations backed by the pictures: separation moved back, a smaller wake.
- A trend that still holds at a higher resolution.
Claims to question
- A 2D drag coefficient quoted as the car’s real Cd, or turned into a race time.
- Comparisons between runs with different tunnels, speeds, gaps or resolutions.
- Conclusions from lift with a small ground clearance, or from parts thinner than about three grid cells.
- Differences of a percent or two when the team’s own readings vary by more than that.
To check a result, open the team’s .windcanvas file at windcanvas.com/app/ (Project → Open…) and let it run. The free version runs it at up to Medium resolution and says so if the file asks for more; at the same resolution the numbers should come back close to the report’s.
For coordinators and organisers
Three things we offer, free.
A licence for every team
Every registered team can claim a free Maker licence for the 2027 season. Share this page with your teams: they email us and we check the registration.
Pro licences as prizes
We provide WindCanvas Pro licences for the winning team at your finals: for a new “Best use of CFD” award, or alongside an engineering award you already run. Pro adds commercial use, the validation suite, sweeps, CSV data export and your logo on reports. Tell us the event and the date.
Guides and a lesson
This page is the guide for teams and judges. The free lesson pack includes a STEM Racing design lesson with a worksheet, and we are happy to show coordinators the app.
For schools
A wind tunnel for the whole class.
Teams get their licence free. For classes and design subjects, schools can licence every computer.
Classroom · US$149 a year
- 30 school computers, plus students’ home computers
- Every Maker feature: full resolution in 2D and 3D, every import, project files, clean reports
- Updates while the licence is current
Whole school · US$399 a year
- Every computer at one school, plus students’ home computers
- The same features as Classroom
- One key for the whole school
Prices in US dollars. Quotes and invoices name your school and suit purchase orders; receipts and invoices come from Polar, our reseller. Every licence has the 14-day refund promise.
WindCanvas is independent. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by STEM Racing, Aramco or Formula 1. “STEM Racing” and “F1 in Schools” are used here only to describe the competitions our users take part in.
Put your car in the wind and see what the air does.
windcanvas.com/stem-racing/
WindCanvas for STEM Racing
A real-time wind tunnel that runs in the browser, made in Western Australia.
What it is
Teams draw or import a side view of their car (a photo, a sketch, or an SVG or DXF from CAD) and see the airflow, drag and lift live, in 2D and 3D, on ordinary school laptops. No installs, no student accounts, and no student data collected.
Why teams use it
They compare design changes in minutes, one at a time, and every result carries a fidelity grade. Runs save as project files and A4 reports, so judges can open the evidence and run it again.
Honest about accuracy
Within a few percent of textbook values on the standard 2D benchmarks. Best for comparing designs and understanding the flow, alongside full CFD and physical testing. Details: windcanvas.com/accuracy/
Runs where students are
Any recent Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari with WebGL2: Windows PCs, Macs, Chromebooks and iPads, using the laptop’s own graphics chip.
Checkable by judges
Every report shows its fidelity grade (A to D), the cells across the body and the simulated Reynolds number beside the real one. Judges can open a team’s project file in the free browser version and run it again; the guide explains which claims are fair.
In our test
A 210 mm car imported from a side view, 5 mm above a moving floor at 20 m/s: lowering the rear and tapering the tail cut its drag by 37 % in the free version and by 31 % at High resolution. That is the workflow: compare versions, then check the important changes at a higher resolution.
The offer, free
- A Maker licence for every registered team for the 2027 season. Teams email support@windcanvas.com with their team name, school, country and registration; we check it and reply with a link.
- Pro licences as prizes for the winning team at finals.
- A guide for teams and judges at windcanvas.com/stem-racing/, and a free lesson pack for teachers at windcanvas.com/teachers/.
For schools
Classroom licence US$149 a year (30 school computers, plus students’ home computers); whole school US$399 a year. Buy online or ask for a quote; invoices and receipts come from Polar, our reseller.
Contact
Shaun Dale · support@windcanvas.com
windcanvas.com/stem-racing/
WindCanvas is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by STEM Racing, Aramco or Formula 1. “STEM Racing” and “F1 in Schools” are used only to describe the competitions.