Quote:
Originally Posted by PST
Thanks for the detailed reply. I suspected it was OpenFOAM, I've been reading up on that but haven't taken the plunge. What are your thoughts on usability? I've heard it's somewhat hard to work with, but it looks like you guys have it figured out.
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Usability is hard to judge. It depends on how much time you want to spend on it and your background in fluid dynamics. I had background using ANSYS Fluent and Star-CCM+ in college and a little after college before trying OpenFOAM. OpenFOAM was very very difficult at first as I am a mechanical engineer and not use to computer programming. I also never used Linux before which made it that much harder. It took me about 2 years working about 3 hours a day to become decent using it. Now, I love it and am glad I took the time to learn it. I have been using it for about 5 years and see no change in site as it is very powerful.
Since OpenFOAM has gained in popularity, they have classes now you can take. I would recommend that to speed up learning time. I know they have classes in Chicago for it in October. They did not have these classes when I was learning.
My main problem with OpenFOAM is the pre and post-processing. I finally became pretty good with the meshing software in OpenFOAM (snappyHexMesh). Before I really learned that, the pre-processing was a pain. I would mesh. It would be terrible. I would change values that should make it better and it would crash. I did a lot of reading before becoming good with it. Plus in the new releases, snappy has been updated to be more powerful. For post-processing, Paraview is pretty unstable in Linux in my opinion. So this is the pain. I do CAD in Windows. Transfer that to my CFD workstation that runs Linux. I would then mesh and run the case. Then transfer the case back to my Windows CAD machine for the post-processing in Paraview.
Another thing I really like about OpenFOAM is that it weeds out the people who just want CFD for marketing. Since it is so difficult to use, people who use it want it for meaningful results. There is a wealth of knowledge online also for it. If you decide to want to use it, hit me up and I can help you get started
