[Adam_Lavely]

I have a large mesh (100+M) simulation that I am currently working on and have been using functionObjects in the controlDict. I have been using these to print out probes and min/max of various flow variables for health monitoring. I have also been using the surfaces functionObject to give out various cut planes through the domain as well as individual patches as a qualitative indicator of simulation health/progression. I want to start using the surfaces (primarily of type patch) for quantitative analysis and now can output the data more often than the output time, thanks to http://www.openfoam.org/mantisbt/view.php?id=650 .

My problem is in the format of the surface output. I had been using vtk files as they are easy to deal with. However, each vtk file includes both the geometry and a single flow variable. When I start to try to use this for quantitative analysis and output at every (or every few) timestep, the total size of my data becomes very large. A single geometry file would suffice for each time-step for the rotating portion of the mesh while the non-rotating parts only need a single geometry file for the entire time-series.

I have looked into using the foamFile surface format but have been unable to figure out how to load this into paraview. The foamFile format only prints out the geometry once per time-step, saving considerable disk space for the output. (I could potentially create an additional function object that only writes out the geometry once.) Unfortunately, I have been unable to come up with a quick/easy way to visualize these data sets.

I have read about the possibility of dumping all of the data that uses the same geometry file into a single vtk file or having a vtk file without geometry point to one that does. But adding a pre-processing step to my post-processing procedure just seems silly if I already have the capability to output foamFiles.

Any suggestions? Thanks.