[johannes]

Hello everybody,

I'm quite new to OpenFOAM and recently finished the three tutorial cases in chapter 2 of the OpenFOAM User Guide. Fortunately, I didn't encounter major problems so far.

During this first steps with OpenFOAM, I'm now planning to compute more complicated tasks (larger number of cells, more diffcult mesh, etc...) and I figured out that I will have to change my current post-processing strategy.

At present (as I use the Cygwin Port of OpenFOAM) I apply foamToVTK and watch the results in ParaView 3.2.1, which was installed as standard Windows software (not source-build). This works quite well but is a bit unconvenient, in particular because of the filesize of the created .vtk-files and the fiddly way to load boundary patches into ParaView.

That's why I would like to know what kind of open source or low cost (< US$ 100) post-processing software (and version) you suggest to use with OpenFOAM?

I think there are three main alternatives:

1.) Build ParaView from source to use the native OpenFOAM reader. But which version to choose, 2.6 or 3.* ? (the last one to use the reader which Takuya Oshima postet here)

2.) Use OpenDX (with DXFoam reader). I don't have experience with OpenDX yet, but I read about it having a higher functionality compared to ParaView, which may be important in some cases.

3.) Use another post-processing software, to be precise: ... (maybe you have a good alternative I didn't mention yet)

Are there specific advantages and disadvantages of particular software, that one should consider?

Many thanks in advance.

Best regards
Johannes

[7islands]

Hi Johannes,
I'd be glad if you take the route of 1.) provided you can allow yourself doing all the hassles of compiling ParaView from source :-) The reader works for 3.3-CVS and probably for the 3.2-series.

I wrote the reader primarily for Windows where complete paraFoam is still yet available and for the 3-series since they handle memory usage much better than 2.6 on Windows (albeit the nice looking UI).

Takuya

[7islands]

A Windows binary package of ParaView 3.3-CVS with the native reader is now available. See the last post of another thread [1].

[1] http://www.cfd-online.com/cgi-bin/Op...8825#POST18825

Takuya

[johannes]

Hi Takuya,

thank you very much for your fast response.

I agree with you so I think I'll try option 1, although I thought there could be a way around building ParaView... ;)

Regarding OpenDX, I tested it few days ago using the XWin X Server within Cygwin. Unfortunately the installation procedure of dxFoam is still producing a bunch of errors which may result from the fact I installed the Windows version of OpenDX.

So, unless I have an existing visualization task which is not possible or impractical to do with ParaView, I'll try to use the reader you wrote together with an 3.* release of ParaView.

Best regards
Johannes