[1] Development work on STAR-CCM+ was started after a decision was taken to design a new, integrated CFD tool to replace the existing product STAR-CD which had been developed during the 1980s and 1990s by Computational Dynamics Ltd, a spin-off company from an Imperial College London CFD research group.

[5] A unique feature was a generalized polyhedral cell formulation, allowing the solver to handle any mesh type imported.

[4] The first official release included the first commercially available polyhedral mesher, offering faster model convergence compared to an equivalent tetrahedral mesh.

[6][7] Simcenter STAR-CCM+ is developed according to a continual improvement process, with a new version released every four months.

Simcenter STAR-CCM+ has multiphysics capabilities including: Prior to CD-adapco's acquisition by Siemens, the customer base was approximately 3,200 accounts with 52% of licence sales attributed to the automotive industry.