Creative Fields releases cfSuite 1.0 and cfMesh 1.0

franjo_j · June 6, 2014, 10:48

Creative Fields, Ltd is proud to announce the release of cfMesh-v1.0. It is an open-source meshing library for OpenFOAM, designed for simple implementation of meshing workflows which can be adapted to the needs of its users. We are also pleased to announce the first release of cfSuite, a GUI hosting environment for cfMesh and OpenFOAM. For more information and download of the products please visit: www.c-fields.com

wyldckat · June 8, 2014, 09:38

Greetings Franjo,

Many thanks for providing cfMesh under a GPL license!

Do feel free to add an entry about cfSuite here: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/GUI
And to add cfMesh to here: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Extend-bazaar

I do have a few quick questions:

Any chance you can also provide the source code of cfMesh through a git, Mercurial or SVN repository, at a reference online open source repository, such as Github, Bitbucket or Sourceforge.net?
Because this way it would make it a bit easier for anyone to contribute to its source code and make it also easier for you to keep track of any forks that are made of cfMesh.
The cfSuite is identified as working on both Linux and Windows. In addition, the documentation hints that both OpenFOAM 2.3 and foam-extend 3.0 are available on the installer for Windows as well. Does this mean that you've ported both versions to Windows?
In addition, if both have been ported to Windows, is it possible to build/rebuild them directly on Windows as well, using the files provided in your suite?
Which architectures and precisions are currently provided in cfSuite? In other words, are both 32 and 64 bit provided or just 64 bit; and is it provided in both Single Precision and Double Precision or just one of them?

Best regards,
Bruno

franjo_j · June 8, 2014, 18:25

Hello Bruno,

Thank you for your questions. I will try to find the time in the couple of days to add some information as you suggested. The answers to your questions are:

1. We are in a process of providing the code in the foam-extend repository, and I hope that it will happen in the next couple of days.
2. cfSuite supports both foam-extend-3.0 and OpenFOAM-2.3.0 on both Windows and Linux. You can download the installer from our website, and try it if you like. The installer sets up the runtime environment in a MSys shell. You can start the shell by clicking an icon on your desktop and run FOAM just like in Linux.
3. You can choose to install the source, too. The source can be rebuilt from the MSys shell. The installer also provides the mingw compiler we used building the version.
4. Currently, we only support 64 bit Windows. In addition, we only provide the double-precision version, because it is more robust for mesh generation.

Kind Regards,

Franjo

wyldckat · June 9, 2014, 08:02

Hi Franjo,

Many thanks for the answers!
Then I also suggest that when you've gotten to adding information to the wiki pages, also add information to this wiki page as well: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Windows

Best regards,
Bruno

wyldckat · June 21, 2014, 17:30

Hi Franjo,

I was really curious about cfMesh and since I couldn't find a git repository to clone/fork from, I went ahead and created one myself: https://github.com/wyldckat/cfMesh

I've also made a few changes to the files related to building cfMesh with OpenFOAM, because there were a few inconsistencies in the "Make/options" files.

Best regards,
Bruno

franjo_j · June 22, 2014, 07:40

Hello Bruno,

cfMesh is available in the next-release branch of foam-extend-3.1, and is available as a Bazaar package in foam-extend-3.1. It will make its way in the master branch in the release 3.2.
In addition, we will set up a repository for cfMesh at the beginning of July for people who want to use it with OpenFOAM, develop cfMesh and share their contributions.

Kind Regards,

Franjo

franjo_j · July 2, 2014, 06:32

Hello Bruno,

We have created a repository for cfMesh on sourceforge. To get the code please do the following: git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/cfmesh/code cfMesh
The code in the repository is compiled into FOAM_USER_LIBBIN and FOAM_USER_APPBIN which fits better users with central installations of OpenFOAM. In addition, we have also improved some tutorials to be consistent with OpenFOAM and foam-extend.
If you want to contribute to the project, either by providing examples, documentation, or development I will be glad to help.

Kind Regards,

Franjo

crixman · July 19, 2014, 05:54

Hi Franjo,
I aws able to compile cfMesh on Ubuntu, but when running ./Allwmake on CentOS 6.4, I get:
./Allwmake: line 3: wmake: command not found
./Allwmake: line 6: wmake: command not found
./Allwmake: line 9: wmake: command not found
did it happen to someone else as well?

Just found out that $WM_OPTION enviroment variable is not set - anyone can help me setting it?
Thanks in advance for the reply!
Christian

franjo_j · July 19, 2014, 16:49

Hello Christian,

I can compile cfMesh on CentOS 5.10, I have not tried on 6.4, yet. Which version of gcc do you use? If your gcc is older that 4.2.4 you will not be able to use multi-threading. You can get and use a newer version of gcc by installing the devtoolset-2. The instructions can be found here: http://linux.web.cern.ch/linux/devtoolset
It seems to me that the OpenFOAM on your system is not set up correctly. cfMesh requires a working OpenFOAM in order to compile and run. What happens if you type: which icoFoam in a shell you use for compiling cfMesh?

$WM_OPTIONS is set up automatically when you source bashrc/cshrc. Can you please check whether foamInstall is correct in your bashrc/cshrc?

I hope this helps a bit.

Regards,

Franjo

crixman · July 21, 2014, 06:23

Hi Franjo,
you were right that OF is not properly installed, it's strange because I followed all steps from
http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/In...CentOS_SL_RHEL
maybe I should have skipped something.
I'll try to install OF again first and let you know if I will be able to compile it!
Thanks for the help,
Christian

crixman · July 21, 2014, 10:01

I reinstalled OF; things seem to work,
which icoFoam
~/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-2.2.0/platforms/linux64Gcc45DPOpt/bin/icoFoam

but I have the same problem - $WM_OPTIONS not set

in bashrc I have:

foamInstall=$HOME/$WM_PROJECT
# foamInstall=~$WM_PROJECT
# foamInstall=/opt/$WM_PROJECT
# foamInstall=/usr/local/$WM_PROJECT

where cd $HOME/$WM_PROJECTS opens the OpenFOAM folder.
foamCompiler is set to system - but I can't find $WM_OPTIONS anywhere - should I set it manually? any other suggestions?

franjo_j · July 21, 2014, 11:18

Hello Christian,

WM_OPTIONS variable is set in etc/config/settings.sh or settings.csh, depending on the shell you use. What is the reason that you use Gcc45? By default, it is set to Gcc. Do you have Gcc 4.5 installed on your machine? What do you get when you type gcc -v?
In addition, you have had the WM_OPTIONS defined because you have the path to the executables. Therefore, WM_OPTIONS=linux64Gcc45DPOpt was defined at some point. Can you please download a fresh source of OpenFOAM-2.2.0 and compare the content of the etc directory with yours.

Regards,

Franjo

elvis · July 22, 2014, 09:36

Dear Bruno,

I am curious will cfMesh be on your blueCFD® Distribution?

Sorry, did not see

crixman · July 22, 2014, 10:51

@ Franjo:
I moved to Ubuntu for time constraints, I will check in the coming days and will update you!
Regards,
Christian

crixman · September 1, 2014, 08:07

Hello Franjo,
I am using cfMesh a lot now.
I was wondering if it is possible to convert tet meshes generated with cfMesh in other formats like UNV, Abaqus .msh, etc...
If not, it could be a tool to work on to extend the use of cfMesh to other software as well!
Regards,
Christian

chriss85 · September 22, 2014, 12:56

Thank you for this very nice meshing tool!

It's really very robust and easy to use.

As for possible future improvements, I have two ideas:

A) Adding a manual control for the total thickness of boundary layers. I couldn't figure out how to control the size of the boundary layers properly. Also, I was unable to get layers with an even thickness over the whole patch, as the nodes were relaxed to improve the quality of the cells next to the layers. I'm not sure if there is a good solution to this issue, but I think there were some updates on layer generation in snappyHexMesh in the previous versions.

B) (Probably more advanced) Support for multi-region meshes would be very nice. Creating such meshes is very tedious in OpenFOAM right now.

taxalian · September 24, 2014, 18:02

Hi Franjo,
I recently used your cfMesh 1.0 version and its quite a handful tool.
I successfully generated decent viscous mesh.

Now i am interested in knowing that is it possible to add explicitly stl file other than the standard primitive shapes like cone, box etc. to define an additional cell zone with or without baffles/boundary.

That can be used later on for MRF/moving mesh simulations with AMI interfaces.

franjo_j · September 25, 2014, 18:42

Hello Chris and taxalian,

Thank you for your suggestions and sorry for the late reply.
@Chris: Multi-material is high on the list of priorities, and we plan to release it with the next major release at the end of the year.
Total thickness of a boundary layer in cfMesh is roughly equal to the cell size at the given location. There are also plans to improve quality and the control over boundary layer thickness in 2015.
@taxalian: We are planing a minor release in the next couple of weeks which will support mesh refinement via additional surface meshes. However, multi-region support based on additional surface meshes is planned for the next major release. I hope this is the correct answer to you question.

Kind Regards,

Franjo

New_OpenFOAM_user · November 4, 2014, 14:45

Hello

I have had trouble recently controlling the y+ values with snappyHexMesh and found this useful thread http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...hexmesh-2.html and therefore downloaded and installed cfMesh hoping that this would be the solution to all my problems.

I compiled and ran the tutorials without any problems, but when it came to meshing my complex geometry I found that I have no idea how to define boundary patches in the cad software before exporting the model as a .stl file. This resulted in my whole geometry being meshed as only one patch making it impossible to define boundary conditions.

If I understood the user manual correctly, the patches should be defined in the cad software before exporting the file as a .stl file. Can anyone please explain to me how to accomplish this? I am currently using a student version of Autodesk Inventor 2014.

Or maybe suggest cad software that has this capability? Otherwise please explain where I am going wrong.

Thank you.

New_OpenFOAM_user · November 4, 2014, 14:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by New_OpenFOAM_user

Hello

I have had trouble recently controlling the y+ values with snappyHexMesh and found this useful thread http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...hexmesh-2.html and therefore downloaded and installed cfMesh hoping that this would be the solution to all my problems.

I compiled and ran the tutorials without any problems, but when it came to meshing my complex geometry I found that I have no idea how to define boundary patches in the cad software before exporting the model as a .stl file. This resulted in my whole geometry being meshed as only one patch making it impossible to define boundary conditions.

If I understood the user manual correctly, the patches should be defined in the cad software before exporting the file as a .stl file. Can anyone please explain to me how to accomplish this? I am currently using a student version of Autodesk Inventor 2014.

Or maybe suggest cad software that has this capability? Otherwise please explain where I am going wrong.

Thank you.

I tried to install cfSuite on ubuntu 12.04 later on in order to see if this would make the process less complicated, but was unable to install it properly. When I double clicked on the executable file (as instructed for installation on the website), it extracted 8 .par2 files named cfSuite-1.0-linux.par2, cfSuite-1.0-linux.vol000+01.par2 and so forth.

I am having trouble understanding what to do with those files. When I try to open them by double clicking on them it says the archive type is not supported. I downloaded the GPar2 application in hopes of solving the problem, but this application only verifies the files and states that it down not need to be repaired.

Any help regarding this problem will be greatly appreciated.

June 6, 2014, 10:48	Creative Fields releases cfSuite 1.0 and cfMesh 1.0	#1
franjo_j Senior Member Franjo Juretic Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Velika Gorica, Croatia Posts: 124 Rep Power: 17	Creative Fields, Ltd is proud to announce the release of cfMesh-v1.0. It is an open-source meshing library for OpenFOAM, designed for simple implementation of meshing workflows which can be adapted to the needs of its users. We are also pleased to announce the first release of cfSuite, a GUI hosting environment for cfMesh and OpenFOAM. For more information and download of the products please visit: www.c-fields.com su_junwei, ngj, Ohbuchi and 12 others like this.

June 8, 2014, 09:38		#2
wyldckat Retired Super Moderator Bruno Santos Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Lisbon, Portugal Posts: 10,982 Blog Entries: 45 Rep Power: 128	Greetings Franjo, Many thanks for providing cfMesh under a GPL license! Do feel free to add an entry about cfSuite here: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/GUI And to add cfMesh to here: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Extend-bazaar I do have a few quick questions: Any chance you can also provide the source code of cfMesh through a git, Mercurial or SVN repository, at a reference online open source repository, such as Github, Bitbucket or Sourceforge.net? Because this way it would make it a bit easier for anyone to contribute to its source code and make it also easier for you to keep track of any forks that are made of cfMesh. The cfSuite is identified as working on both Linux and Windows. In addition, the documentation hints that both OpenFOAM 2.3 and foam-extend 3.0 are available on the installer for Windows as well. Does this mean that you've ported both versions to Windows? In addition, if both have been ported to Windows, is it possible to build/rebuild them directly on Windows as well, using the files provided in your suite? Which architectures and precisions are currently provided in cfSuite? In other words, are both 32 and 64 bit provided or just 64 bit; and is it provided in both Single Precision and Double Precision or just one of them? Best regards, Bruno pbachant likes this.

June 8, 2014, 18:25		#3
franjo_j Senior Member Franjo Juretic Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Velika Gorica, Croatia Posts: 124 Rep Power: 17	Hello Bruno, Thank you for your questions. I will try to find the time in the couple of days to add some information as you suggested. The answers to your questions are: 1. We are in a process of providing the code in the foam-extend repository, and I hope that it will happen in the next couple of days. 2. cfSuite supports both foam-extend-3.0 and OpenFOAM-2.3.0 on both Windows and Linux. You can download the installer from our website, and try it if you like. The installer sets up the runtime environment in a MSys shell. You can start the shell by clicking an icon on your desktop and run FOAM just like in Linux. 3. You can choose to install the source, too. The source can be rebuilt from the MSys shell. The installer also provides the mingw compiler we used building the version. 4. Currently, we only support 64 bit Windows. In addition, we only provide the double-precision version, because it is more robust for mesh generation. Kind Regards, Franjo wyldckat likes this.

June 22, 2014, 07:40	cfMesh repository	#6
franjo_j Senior Member Franjo Juretic Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Velika Gorica, Croatia Posts: 124 Rep Power: 17	Hello Bruno, cfMesh is available in the next-release branch of foam-extend-3.1, and is available as a Bazaar package in foam-extend-3.1. It will make its way in the master branch in the release 3.2. In addition, we will set up a repository for cfMesh at the beginning of July for people who want to use it with OpenFOAM, develop cfMesh and share their contributions. Kind Regards, Franjo philippose and wyldckat like this.

July 2, 2014, 06:32	cfMesh on SourceForge	#7
franjo_j Senior Member Franjo Juretic Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Velika Gorica, Croatia Posts: 124 Rep Power: 17	Hello Bruno, We have created a repository for cfMesh on sourceforge. To get the code please do the following: git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/cfmesh/code cfMesh The code in the repository is compiled into FOAM_USER_LIBBIN and FOAM_USER_APPBIN which fits better users with central installations of OpenFOAM. In addition, we have also improved some tutorials to be consistent with OpenFOAM and foam-extend. If you want to contribute to the project, either by providing examples, documentation, or development I will be glad to help. Kind Regards, Franjo snak, bigphil and wyldckat like this.

June 9, 2014, 08:02		#4
wyldckat Retired Super Moderator Bruno Santos Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Lisbon, Portugal Posts: 10,982 Blog Entries: 45 Rep Power: 128	Hi Franjo, Many thanks for the answers! Then I also suggest that when you've gotten to adding information to the wiki pages, also add information to this wiki page as well: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Windows Best regards, Bruno

June 21, 2014, 17:30		#5
wyldckat Retired Super Moderator Bruno Santos Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Lisbon, Portugal Posts: 10,982 Blog Entries: 45 Rep Power: 128	Hi Franjo, I was really curious about cfMesh and since I couldn't find a git repository to clone/fork from, I went ahead and created one myself: https://github.com/wyldckat/cfMesh I've also made a few changes to the files related to building cfMesh with OpenFOAM, because there were a few inconsistencies in the "Make/options" files. Best regards, Bruno

July 19, 2014, 05:54	Compilation problem in CentOS 6.4	#8
crixman Member Christian Join Date: Apr 2014 Posts: 74 Rep Power: 12	Hi Franjo, I aws able to compile cfMesh on Ubuntu, but when running ./Allwmake on CentOS 6.4, I get: ./Allwmake: line 3: wmake: command not found ./Allwmake: line 6: wmake: command not found ./Allwmake: line 9: wmake: command not found did it happen to someone else as well? Just found out that $WM_OPTION enviroment variable is not set - anyone can help me setting it? Thanks in advance for the reply! Christian Last edited by crixman; July 19, 2014 at 11:54.

July 19, 2014, 16:49	Vompilation problems on CentOS 6.4	#9
franjo_j Senior Member Franjo Juretic Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Velika Gorica, Croatia Posts: 124 Rep Power: 17	Hello Christian, I can compile cfMesh on CentOS 5.10, I have not tried on 6.4, yet. Which version of gcc do you use? If your gcc is older that 4.2.4 you will not be able to use multi-threading. You can get and use a newer version of gcc by installing the devtoolset-2. The instructions can be found here: http://linux.web.cern.ch/linux/devtoolset It seems to me that the OpenFOAM on your system is not set up correctly. cfMesh requires a working OpenFOAM in order to compile and run. What happens if you type: which icoFoam in a shell you use for compiling cfMesh? $WM_OPTIONS is set up automatically when you source bashrc/cshrc. Can you please check whether foamInstall is correct in your bashrc/cshrc? I hope this helps a bit. Regards, Franjo

July 21, 2014, 06:23		#10
crixman Member Christian Join Date: Apr 2014 Posts: 74 Rep Power: 12	Hi Franjo, you were right that OF is not properly installed, it's strange because I followed all steps from http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/In...CentOS_SL_RHEL maybe I should have skipped something. I'll try to install OF again first and let you know if I will be able to compile it! Thanks for the help, Christian

July 21, 2014, 10:01		#11
crixman Member Christian Join Date: Apr 2014 Posts: 74 Rep Power: 12	I reinstalled OF; things seem to work, which icoFoam ~/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-2.2.0/platforms/linux64Gcc45DPOpt/bin/icoFoam but I have the same problem - $WM_OPTIONS not set in bashrc I have: foamInstall=$HOME/$WM_PROJECT # foamInstall=~$WM_PROJECT # foamInstall=/opt/$WM_PROJECT # foamInstall=/usr/local/$WM_PROJECT where cd $HOME/$WM_PROJECTS opens the OpenFOAM folder. foamCompiler is set to system - but I can't find $WM_OPTIONS anywhere - should I set it manually? any other suggestions?

July 21, 2014, 11:18		#12
franjo_j Senior Member Franjo Juretic Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Velika Gorica, Croatia Posts: 124 Rep Power: 17	Hello Christian, WM_OPTIONS variable is set in etc/config/settings.sh or settings.csh, depending on the shell you use. What is the reason that you use Gcc45? By default, it is set to Gcc. Do you have Gcc 4.5 installed on your machine? What do you get when you type gcc -v? In addition, you have had the WM_OPTIONS defined because you have the path to the executables. Therefore, WM_OPTIONS=linux64Gcc45DPOpt was defined at some point. Can you please download a fresh source of OpenFOAM-2.2.0 and compare the content of the etc directory with yours. Regards, Franjo

July 22, 2014, 09:36		#13
elvis Senior Member Elvis Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Sindelfingen, Germany Posts: 620 Blog Entries: 6 Rep Power: 24	Dear Bruno, I am curious will cfMesh be on your blueCFD® Distribution? Sorry, did not see

July 22, 2014, 10:51		#14
crixman Member Christian Join Date: Apr 2014 Posts: 74 Rep Power: 12	@ Franjo: I moved to Ubuntu for time constraints, I will check in the coming days and will update you! Regards, Christian

September 1, 2014, 08:07		#15
crixman Member Christian Join Date: Apr 2014 Posts: 74 Rep Power: 12	Hello Franjo, I am using cfMesh a lot now. I was wondering if it is possible to convert tet meshes generated with cfMesh in other formats like UNV, Abaqus .msh, etc... If not, it could be a tool to work on to extend the use of cfMesh to other software as well! Regards, Christian

September 22, 2014, 12:56		#16
chriss85 Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2013 Posts: 397 Rep Power: 19	Thank you for this very nice meshing tool! It's really very robust and easy to use. As for possible future improvements, I have two ideas: A) Adding a manual control for the total thickness of boundary layers. I couldn't figure out how to control the size of the boundary layers properly. Also, I was unable to get layers with an even thickness over the whole patch, as the nodes were relaxed to improve the quality of the cells next to the layers. I'm not sure if there is a good solution to this issue, but I think there were some updates on layer generation in snappyHexMesh in the previous versions. B) (Probably more advanced) Support for multi-region meshes would be very nice. Creating such meshes is very tedious in OpenFOAM right now. phsieh2005 likes this.

September 24, 2014, 18:02		#17
taxalian Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2010 Posts: 139 Rep Power: 15	Hi Franjo, I recently used your cfMesh 1.0 version and its quite a handful tool. I successfully generated decent viscous mesh. Now i am interested in knowing that is it possible to add explicitly stl file other than the standard primitive shapes like cone, box etc. to define an additional cell zone with or without baffles/boundary. That can be used later on for MRF/moving mesh simulations with AMI interfaces.

September 25, 2014, 18:42		#18
franjo_j Senior Member Franjo Juretic Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Velika Gorica, Croatia Posts: 124 Rep Power: 17	Hello Chris and taxalian, Thank you for your suggestions and sorry for the late reply. @Chris: Multi-material is high on the list of priorities, and we plan to release it with the next major release at the end of the year. Total thickness of a boundary layer in cfMesh is roughly equal to the cell size at the given location. There are also plans to improve quality and the control over boundary layer thickness in 2015. @taxalian: We are planing a minor release in the next couple of weeks which will support mesh refinement via additional surface meshes. However, multi-region support based on additional surface meshes is planned for the next major release. I hope this is the correct answer to you question. Kind Regards, Franjo wyldckat, phsieh2005, taxalian and 1 others like this.

November 4, 2014, 14:45	Boundary patches and .stl files	#19
New_OpenFOAM_user New Member Chrissy Stanford Join Date: Oct 2013 Location: South Africa Posts: 11 Rep Power: 13	Hello I have had trouble recently controlling the y+ values with snappyHexMesh and found this useful thread http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...hexmesh-2.html and therefore downloaded and installed cfMesh hoping that this would be the solution to all my problems. I compiled and ran the tutorials without any problems, but when it came to meshing my complex geometry I found that I have no idea how to define boundary patches in the cad software before exporting the model as a .stl file. This resulted in my whole geometry being meshed as only one patch making it impossible to define boundary conditions. If I understood the user manual correctly, the patches should be defined in the cad software before exporting the file as a .stl file. Can anyone please explain to me how to accomplish this? I am currently using a student version of Autodesk Inventor 2014. Or maybe suggest cad software that has this capability? Otherwise please explain where I am going wrong. Thank you.