Introducing droneCFD -- Simplifying OpenFOAM simulations of small fixed wing aircraft

capucsc · October 15, 2014, 19:54

I would like to introduce droneCFD.com to the CFD-Online community. The purpose of droneCFD is to reduce the complexity of running Openfoam CFD simulations on small unmanned aircraft geometries. To do this, droneCFD uses the OpenFOAM toolkit for meshing and solvers, with a little extra automation to handle case setup, simulation domain configuration and parallel execution.

To get started with DroneCFD, you need to have OpenFOAM 2.3.0 and PyFoam installed on your machine. You can install droneCFD using 'pip install droneCFD'. You can double check that OpenFOAM is installed correctly by running 'dcCheck' in a terminal. Your first simulation only requires you to type 'dcRun', which will run a simulation based on a reference geometry packaged with droneCFD. 'dcRun -h' will provide more details about what's possible. More details can be found at dronecfd.com/gettingstarted.

This project was the result of many frustrating hours trying to simulate flow around a novel small unmanned aircraft geometry. It is far from perfect, but I'm hoping feedback and lots of testing will help improve it.

The code is located on Github, and I've setup a webpage with a details and a forum for collecting feedback. Please take a look, try it out and let me know what you think!

pbachant · October 16, 2014, 13:28

Cool library, and thanks for your contribution!

Here's a little constructive criticism (sorry if it's pedantic):

Some of the writing style is not very Pythonic. For example, your module names are capitalized. See http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/. I realize this is hard to achieve when working closely with a C++ library (PyFoam is guilty of this as well), but it can make it easier to use your package to write new code if it's easy to predict what things are named.

capucsc · October 17, 2014, 07:21

Thanks for the feedback and the link. It's something I'll keep in mind as I go forward. I also need more documentation for the code. I was planning on spending my weekend on that, but perhaps I'll also spend some time improving the code.

Just out of curiosity, were you able to get things to run?

capucsc · October 17, 2014, 07:22

Also, thanks for being the first contributor on GitHub

October 15, 2014, 19:54	Introducing droneCFD -- Simplifying OpenFOAM simulations of small fixed wing aircraft	#1
capucsc New Member Chris Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 12 Rep Power: 15	I would like to introduce droneCFD.com to the CFD-Online community. The purpose of droneCFD is to reduce the complexity of running Openfoam CFD simulations on small unmanned aircraft geometries. To do this, droneCFD uses the OpenFOAM toolkit for meshing and solvers, with a little extra automation to handle case setup, simulation domain configuration and parallel execution. To get started with DroneCFD, you need to have OpenFOAM 2.3.0 and PyFoam installed on your machine. You can install droneCFD using 'pip install droneCFD'. You can double check that OpenFOAM is installed correctly by running 'dcCheck' in a terminal. Your first simulation only requires you to type 'dcRun', which will run a simulation based on a reference geometry packaged with droneCFD. 'dcRun -h' will provide more details about what's possible. More details can be found at dronecfd.com/gettingstarted. This project was the result of many frustrating hours trying to simulate flow around a novel small unmanned aircraft geometry. It is far from perfect, but I'm hoping feedback and lots of testing will help improve it. The code is located on Github, and I've setup a webpage with a details and a forum for collecting feedback. Please take a look, try it out and let me know what you think! elvis and Ohbuchi like this.

October 16, 2014, 13:28		#2
pbachant Senior Member Pete Bachant Join Date: Jun 2012 Location: Boston, MA Posts: 173 Rep Power: 14	Cool library, and thanks for your contribution! Here's a little constructive criticism (sorry if it's pedantic): Some of the writing style is not very Pythonic. For example, your module names are capitalized. See http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/. I realize this is hard to achieve when working closely with a C++ library (PyFoam is guilty of this as well), but it can make it easier to use your package to write new code if it's easy to predict what things are named. capucsc likes this. __________________ Home \| Twitter \| GitHub

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October 17, 2014, 07:21		#3
capucsc New Member Chris Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 12 Rep Power: 15	Thanks for the feedback and the link. It's something I'll keep in mind as I go forward. I also need more documentation for the code. I was planning on spending my weekend on that, but perhaps I'll also spend some time improving the code. Just out of curiosity, were you able to get things to run?

October 17, 2014, 07:22		#4
capucsc New Member Chris Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 12 Rep Power: 15	Also, thanks for being the first contributor on GitHub