[wyldckat]

Greetings to all!

There have been already several open-source applications that have been developed specifically for OpenFOAM as GUIs or as scripts, utilities, solvers, libraries and so on.
Problem is that they can easily get lost in the busy OpenFOAM sub-forums and people end up forgetting the application names and that those even existed.

Very few of those applications have their own discussion forums outside of http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ or already have a dedicated sub-forum at cfd-online , but usually only because those with their own forums have at least two people working on them.

The features of these applications are usually in the range of editing, meshing and pre-processing, but perhaps it would be good to keep an open perspective on the possibility of many others rising up for post-processing and programming.
Then there are also those that create scripts, solvers and utilities, but don't post them at openfoamwiki.net, nor do they submit their applications to the unsupported contributions repository.
There are also some (rare) cases of tutorials showing up in the forums, but it's harder to categorize them, since they can relate to any topic...

So basically the suggestion is to create one or two sub-forums dedicated to the discussion of these kinds applications, as well as keeping track of their existence with sticky threads on each sub-forum (if necessary), possibly with something like this:

• OpenFOAM (the already existing forum)
  • ... (the sub-forums that already exist)
  • Community open-source contributions
    • GUIs
    • Scripts, Utilities, Solvers and Libraries
      (sometimes it's hard to break these apart into just solvers or libraries)

To name a few of the threads I'm thinking about:

• GUIs:
  • http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...pyhexmesh.html
  • http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...nto-helyx.html
  • http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...ributions.html
  • http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...s-meshers.html
  • http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...a-release.html
• Scripts, Utilities, Solvers and Libraries:
  • http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...ry-update.html
  • http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...ed-topics.html
  • (sorry, there are several more, but I can't find them at the moment)
  • edit: there are several threads on the topic of swak4Foam, pyFoam. These topics (almost) deserve their own sub-forum!

Best regards,
Bruno

[haakon]

I just recently stumbled upon this suggestion, and even tough it is a bit old, I would like to express my support for this. The different contributions to OpenFOAM is very welcome, and giving them their own category could mane them more visible and accessible to the "general public".

However, I am not sure if several sub-categories are needed, perhaps one single "Community open-source contributions" is enough.

[wyldckat]

Greetings Håkon and many thanks for the feedback!From my experience on the OpenFOAM forum, I suggested the two branches:

• GUIs
• Scripts, Utilities, Solvers and Libraries

simply because the topic on the GUIs tend to get lost in the middle of all of the other contributions. And maintaining sticky threads for not loosing track of them can get a bit tricky...

Although, now that I think about it and based on your feedback, the following structure might be best:

• Community open-source contributions (where all related topics are discussed)
  • Open-source GUIs for OpenFOAM
  • swak4Foam and PyFoam

Best regards,
Bruno

[ngj]

Good afternoon,

I have just come across this thread, and I think a separate sub-forum for GUIs and swak/pyFoam would make it easier for people to find information and more importantly, fewer questions will be asked on the same topics.

The rest of the community contributions such as solidMechanics, waves2Foam, etc do not need specific sub-folders, as the activity nonetheless is still relatively limited.

Kind regards,

Niels

[jola]

Making a separate OpenFOAM subforum named "Community open-source contributions" is certainly possible. However, we have already done a few of that kind of sub-forums both in the meshing section (see the subforums on http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/openfoam-meshing/) and in the post-processing section (the Paraview and paraFoam sub-forum). Should we then also move the community related sub-forums from the meshing section into the new "Community" forum, or perhaps we should instead add the new sub-forums to the already existing forums? I am hesitant about the best structure. Irrespective of where we place these sub-forums have I interpreted you correctly that you want sub-forums for:

1. GUIs
2. swak4Foam and PyFoam (as one forum?)

Or are you suggesting more sub-forums?

Adding a "Community" forum might have the good side-effect to keep those discussions away from the more pure OpenFOAM discussions.

[wyldckat]

Hi Jonas,

The latest idea was to have a "Community open-source contributions" subforum in the OpenFOAM forum, at the same level as installation, meshing, post-processing and so on.
Then have 2 sub-forums in "Community open-source contributions":

• Open-source GUIs for OpenFOAM
• swak4Foam and PyFoam

Adding more subforums in the main "Community open-source contributions" will then depend on the amount of threads that are open regarding a particular source code toolkit.

So far, one example is swak4Foam and PyFoam that have a substantial amount of threads dedicated to them. And on occasion, they overlap, given that swak4Foam has abilities to use Python. On a side note: although many features of both swak4Foam and PyFoam are mainly post-processing, it would not do them justice as they cover pre-processing+meshing, running and post-processing capabilities.

As for the GUIs: NETGEN, enGrid and Gmsh were not in my mind when I thought about this new sub-forum, because they already have a good communication structure (or so I think). And the "Open-source GUIs for OpenFOAM" are the ones that are mainly dedicated to OpenFOAM only and are somewhat new to the public.

As for the subforum "paraFoam + ParaView": it doesn't feel right to move this subforum to the community subforum, as ParaView is the main/default post-processor for OpenFOAM.

In conclusion, the proposed structure would be:

• OpenFOAM
  • OpenFOAM News & Announcements
    • OpenFOAM Announcements from ESI-OpenCFD
    • OpenFOAM Announcements from Other Sources
  • OpenFOAM Installation
    • OpenFOAM Installation on Windows, Mac and other Unsupported Platforms
  • OpenFOAM Meshing & Mesh Conversion
    • OpenFOAM Native Meshers: blockMesh
    • OpenFOAM Native Meshers: snappyHexMesh and Others
    • Open Source Meshers: Gmsh, Netgen, CGNS, ...
    • OpenFOAM Other Meshers: ICEM, Star, Ansys, Pointwise, GridPro, Ansa, ...
    • OpenFOAM Mesh Utilities
    • OpenFOAM Meshing Format & General Technical
  • OpenFOAM Pre-Processing
  • OpenFOAM Running, Solving & CFD
  • OpenFOAM Post-Processing
    • OpenFOAM Paraview & paraFoam
  • OpenFOAM Programming & Development
  • OpenFOAM Verification & Validation
  • OpenFOAM Bugs
  • Community open-source contributions
    • Open-source GUIs for OpenFOAM
    • swak4Foam and PyFoam

where in bold are the new subforums.

Best regards,
Bruno

[Annier]

Hi,
Also it would be comfortable for beginners like me if there is a sub-forum called general discussion on OpenFOAM.
Yours
Anil Kunwar

[holger_marschall]

Hi Bruno,

I just think that the two proposed sub-forums result with a non-monolithic structure here. I would search for GUIs in the pre-processing sub-forum. swak4Foam and pyFoam are concrete developments, such as wavesToFoam and many others community-driven developments, which IMHO would deserve a sub-forum due to very vivid discussions going on distributed at several places.

Maybe we should talk about new sub-forums in the respective categories:

• OpenFOAM Running, Solving & CFD
  - wavesToFoam
  - swak4Foam and pyFoam
• OpenFOAM Pre-Processing
  - Helyx OS
  - ...

Just my 2 cents.

Edit: just another comment: currently too many threads appear in the general/root forum which makes it hard to search. This certainly goes to the moderators. Also, waves2Foam is entirely discussed in the announcement section, which effectively masks new announcements. I think sub-forums for community-driven developments, however, *within* the respective forum categories would help a lot.

Holger

[ngj]

Hi Holger,

Just a small clarification on the waves2Foam discussions. The posts in the announcement part is only related to information on new revisions of waves2Foam, i.e. developments and/or bug-fixes.

The main discussions on waves2Foam are in this thread in the running/solving-section:

http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...ed-topics.html

which is current running on an exhausting 770 posts, which I agree would definitely have cluttered the announcement section, as it was doing in the beginning.

Kind regards,

Niels

[holger_marschall]

Hi Niels,

thanks for clarification.

Anyway, a lot of information can be found also in the announcement thread (which is what I initially meant). Hence, my point was, why not have a sub-forum for all the noteworthy community-driven contributions to OpenFOAM!? IMO, you'd definitely deserved one!

best regards,
Holger.

[wyldckat]

Greetings to all!

@Holger:

Originally Posted by holger_marschall

Maybe we should talk about new sub-forums in the respective categories:

• OpenFOAM Running, Solving & CFD
  - wavesToFoam
  - swak4Foam and pyFoam
• OpenFOAM Pre-Processing
  - Helyx OS
  - ...

The reasons why I'm not in favour of that subforum distribution are:

1. wavesToFoam, swak4Foam and PyFoam are toolkits. As toolkits, they provide features for meshing, preprocessing, running, solving and post-processing.
2. Same goes for HelyxOS, where it can mesh generation, preprocessing, solver running and possibly post-processing in the future.
3. Forum members, mostly new ones, are already confused with where they should ask their questions and will likely seek the forum with the highest success of response. Hence many of them posting in the main forum.

Originally Posted by holger_marschall

currently too many threads appear in the general/root forum which makes it hard to search. This certainly goes to the moderators.

Occasionally I do some pruning in the first and second pages of the main OpenFOAM forum. When I'm done with the pruning, around ~50% of the posts are then redirects to the correct locations. Those which remain, are likely ambiguous on their questions and don't have a specific subforum for them. Problem is that it then sort-of looks like a paper full of holes, which is why personally I don't scale up the OCD in moving the threads

Originally Posted by holger_marschall

Hence, my point was, why not have a sub-forum for all the noteworthy community-driven contributions to OpenFOAM!? IMO, you'd definitely deserved one!

The initial proposition on this thread was to gather all contribution-related threads in an easy-to-find location. Hence the proposition to keep them all in the same relative subforum.
In addition, scaling up can then be somewhat easy, in the sense that as the tools gain more and more traction, can be assigned a new subforum. At the time, the proposition didn't include waves2Foam as it didn't seem at the time to have reached critical mass, but over 770 posts does make sense to create a subforum for it as well. Same goes for the solidMechanics toolkit.

The updated proposed structure:

• OpenFOAM
  • OpenFOAM News & Announcements
    • OpenFOAM Announcements from ESI-OpenCFD
    • OpenFOAM Announcements from Other Sources
  • OpenFOAM Installation
    • OpenFOAM Installation on Windows, Mac and other Unsupported Platforms
  • OpenFOAM Meshing & Mesh Conversion
    • OpenFOAM Native Meshers: blockMesh
    • OpenFOAM Native Meshers: snappyHexMesh and Others
    • Open Source Meshers: Gmsh, Netgen, CGNS, ...
    • OpenFOAM Other Meshers: ICEM, Star, Ansys, Pointwise, GridPro, Ansa, ...
    • OpenFOAM Mesh Utilities
    • OpenFOAM Meshing Format & General Technical
  • OpenFOAM Pre-Processing
  • OpenFOAM Running, Solving & CFD
  • OpenFOAM Post-Processing
    • OpenFOAM Paraview & paraFoam
  • OpenFOAM Programming & Development
  • OpenFOAM Verification & Validation
  • OpenFOAM Bugs
  • Community open-source contributions
    • Open-source GUIs for OpenFOAM
    • swak4Foam and PyFoam
    • wave2Foam
    • solidMechanics

Best regards,
Bruno

[ngj]

Good afternoon,

Thank you for the kind words.

Lately, I have become more in favour of a separate sub-forum for e.g. waves2Foam, because I experience that the users (to some degree understandable) do not look through 770 post to find a solution. This results in many duplicated questions.

Therefore a sub-forum with e.g. an installation thread, an announcement thread, and topic like wave breaking, waveDyMFoam, coupling with external wave generator, porousWaveFoam, etc would make life easier for all parties.

Kind regards,

Niels

[chegdan]

Bruno,

From a HELYX-OS perspective, I think this will make posting questions; searching for existing questions/solutions; and fostering an online community much easier. Because GUIs cover pre-processing and running cases, its often difficult for new users to know exactly where to post a question. In terms of swak4Foam, waves2Foam, pyFoam, densityBasedTurbo, catalyticFoam, shipHydro, cufflink, equationReader, etc. I think it would strengthen these communities to have a sub-forum for these libraries. My question though: What sub-forums are represented as standalone sub-forums?

Again, great idea and I think this is a logical next step in the forum structure to help both new and experienced users.

[wyldckat]

Hi Dan,

Originally Posted by chegdan

My question though: What sub-forums are represented as standalone sub-forums?

My guess is that a threshold of 100-200 posts would be enough to qualify for a particular toolkit or GUI to have its own sub-forum. Until then, the related posts would be kept in the main Community open-source contributions.
A sticky thread could be used in this particular main sub-forum to help guide what contributions can be found in it... something like a pre-buffer for the Extend Bazaar at openfoamwiki.net: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Extend-bazaar

Best regards,
Bruno

[holger_marschall]

Dear all,

Your arguments are certainly valid.

However, I am still ruminative and hesitant in saying "so here we go: let's distinguish in vanilla stuff, coming from ESI-OpenCFD(R) and other, unapproved community-driven contributions" -- see the title of the proposed sub-forum. OpenFOAM is an open source software product and should IMHO develop towards a free, community-driven software platform including a free software development model (cf. this thread http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...nes-draft.html).

In this light, categorizations as the proposed one does not seem of help... Of course, having sub-forums related to toolkits spread all over the current forum structure is no solution as well; additionally, the proposed structure is inconsistent as well, as it does not cover *all* third-party contributions/topics interfacing to OpenFOAM or extending its use, currently present as sub-forums (see meshing, or installing OpenFOAM on unsupported operation systems)

Just my 2 cents.

best regards,
Holger

[wyldckat]

Dear Holger,

Many thanks for the feedback!

The point of view from which I've been pressing on has been from a moderator + forum contributor point of view, in the sense that: people need help and it's getting harder and harder to help the users find those who can help.

To me the line between "OpenFOAM + variants" and "community contributions" is one that will unlikely to fade in the near future and the questions keep coming in every day. And given the evolution of the forums and sub-forums here on CFD-Online, it felt to me that the proposed structure to add a new sub-forum specifically for community contributions seems to be the most suitable one. In addition, the goal is to add sub-forums to it on a need basis, as the number of posts will eventually lead to such a need.

Originally Posted by holger_marschall

However, I am still ruminative and hesitant in saying "so here we go: let's distinguish in vanilla stuff, coming from ESI-OpenCFD(R) and other, unapproved community-driven contributions" -- see the title of the proposed sub-forum. OpenFOAM is an open source software product and should IMHO develop towards a free, community-driven software platform including a free software development model (cf. this thread http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...nes-draft.html).

The current forum structure does not set apart the main OpenFOAM versions from the Extend variants/forks. But it can get rather stressful that many people are unable to notice that there are considerable differences between each version of OpenFOAM itself + the versions of variants/forks. This is because, in a sense, each OpenFOAM version is a fork of the previous version!

Furthermore, there is a particular detail here: OpenFOAM is by definition a programmable toolbox, but many come to the forum looking for "user only" + "no coding" solutions. Which possibly would explain why people don't see much importance on a version number and name of the program...

Originally Posted by holger_marschall

In this light, categorizations as the proposed one does not seem of help...

I agree that the current proposition is inherently one that can easily create/enforce a line that seems like as if it should never be broken.

Originally Posted by holger_marschall

additionally, the proposed structure is inconsistent as well, as it does not cover *all* third-party contributions/topics interfacing to OpenFOAM or extending its use, currently present as sub-forums (see meshing, or installing OpenFOAM on unsupported operation systems)

I'm sorry, but I got a bit lost on this part of your post. Holger, if possible, please detail further your statement above.
Because the way I tried to understand your description, lead me to these lines of thought:

• Covering "all scenarios" is usually a very complicated topic, since "the best is the enemy of the good"... i.e., finding the optimum solution is usually too costly to make it practical/possible.
• The current proposition does not affect the remaining structure of the forum.
• The proposition considers that it will have to gradually expand to new sub-forums, depending on the number of questions. This means that main "Community open-source contributions" sub-forum would be open to any and all contributions and respective questions/threads/posts.
• Creating too many sub-forums or an extensive structure can lead to greater confusion. For that, the wiki system at openfoamwiki.net would assist in keeping a more strict structure correlation, i.e., if the person is looking for something specific, would check the wiki and then go to the known threads/sub-forum.
• At the moment, it feels that one of the greatest needs for the OpenFOAM forum is a "triage" sub-forum specific for newbies, for helping them find which sub-forum they should be asking in, as Anil Kunwar stated in post #7. In theory, this is suppose to be the main OpenFOAM forum, but still...
• I'm already so familiar to the current forum structure, that I'm unable to see many of the problems it might have, apart from the specific need for community contributions.

Best regards,
Bruno

[holger_marschall]

Dear Bruno,

completely understanding your point of view. However, I just think that the intention of helping newbies etc. within a *discussion* forum is a very ambitious task. It's neither a help desk system with tickets (which we should not start!) nor a Q&A system as the one at stackoverflow. Here it really feels like a festival of repeated questions. A Q&A system, to a great extend, would remedy problems related to what you wish to do with a discussion forum software ... and some of them would be free http://meta.stackexchange.com/questi...verflow-clones.

As for the proposed changes to the forum structure: I just want to advocate a rigorous and consistent structure. I.e., better put *all* third-party stuff, which are either extending or interfacing to the official OpenFOAM(R)/FOAM distributions, to one specific sub-forum. This would include paraview (and other third parties that offer interfaces to FOAM technology), community-driven developments which are dedicated to and using FOAM technology such as swak4Foam, waves2Foam, pyFoam, densityBasedTurbo, catalyticFoam, shipHydro, cufflink, equationReader, etc. (as mentioned by Dan), and it should include virtually every topic which is not officially supported by ESI/OpenCFD(R) such as operating systems they do not support officially. It would be soon, that people require the same structure (solving, pre-/postprocessing, etc.) as one layer above. This is also why, I am not in favor of it.

However, in fact this would mean a fork in discussions and, clearly, I personally do not want to see such a solution, since it cuts the community, the user/developer base on FOAM technology, into two parts: official and inofficial but community-driven.

So what about hosting a professional Q&A system with link to the discussion threads here? IMHO, this would be the next consequent step. A Q&A system is created with the clear intent of knowledge capturing / storing / dissemination. This way repeating questions in different discussion threads can be redirected to the best (highest scored) answers from within the central discussion forums here.

@Jonas: Could this be connected on the user database level / would you be able and willing to host such a system?

best regards,
Holger

[chegdan]

Hi All,

First off, great discussion.

One point that like from Holger's last comment was a reference to other Q&A forums like stackoverflow. What I like at SO, is that before a post is actually posted there is an automatic search and list of other possible threads that this question has been posed. The poster can then cancel their post or say "no, this is different" and start a new topic.

In addition, what if the top level forum (OpenFOAM) is does not allow posting directly? In turn, explicitly forcing those that are there to ask questions to go into sub-forums (e.g. OpenFOAM pre-processing, OpenFOAM Programming and Development,etc). This may result in them doing a search to find similar questions and lead them to as in the appropriate area. You could possibly start to get more moderators that can moderate these sub-forums if things are placed in the wrong spot.

Now, I understand that my comments are beyond the original scope of this thread but i think its appropriate to pose such questions/comments if there is some planning/rearranging that is happening. Thanks again for all the comments, I'm following this thread to see what happens.

Dan

[wyldckat]

Dear Holger and Dan,

Many thanks for the feedback!

Regarding a system like stackoverflow: I have no idea if Jonas and Peter are willing to implement such a system in the cfd-online.com server, but I know that:

1. The Computational Science group at StackExchange has been gathering a bit of OpenFOAM users: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/
2. StackExchange - http://stackexchange.com - seems to be open to creating new groups.

As for discontinuing the ability to post on the main OpenFOAM forum, there is one downside that comes to mind: what do we do with the posts that do not fit any particular profile? For example:

• questions about courses;
• questions that range the part or a whole spectrum of a project (pre-processing, meshing, simulation and post-processing).

OK, so right now there seems to be two structure propositions for the forum as shown below, where in bold are the changes. Both propositions are still open to ideas and/or renaming/restructuring.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Proposition 1:

• OpenFOAM
  • OpenFOAM News & Announcements
    • OpenFOAM Announcements from ESI-OpenCFD
    • OpenFOAM Announcements from Other Sources
  • OpenFOAM Installation
    • OpenFOAM Installation on Windows, Mac and other Unsupported Platforms
  • OpenFOAM Meshing & Mesh Conversion
    • OpenFOAM Native Meshers: blockMesh
    • OpenFOAM Native Meshers: snappyHexMesh and Others
    • Open Source Meshers: Gmsh, Netgen, CGNS, ...
    • OpenFOAM Other Meshers: ICEM, Star, Ansys, Pointwise, GridPro, Ansa, ...
    • OpenFOAM Mesh Utilities
    • OpenFOAM Meshing Format & General Technical
  • OpenFOAM Pre-Processing
  • OpenFOAM Running, Solving & CFD
  • OpenFOAM Post-Processing
    • OpenFOAM Paraview & paraFoam
  • OpenFOAM Programming & Development
  • OpenFOAM Verification & Validation
  • OpenFOAM Bugs
  • Community open-source contributions
    • Open-source GUIs for OpenFOAM
    • swak4Foam and PyFoam
    • wave2Foam
    • solidMechanics

Notes about proposition 1:

• The "Community open-source contributions" sub-forum gathers threads regarding contributions that have not yet gathered momentum.
• The threshold could be something like 50-100 posts about a particular software/project, in order to make sense to create a new sub-forum within "Community open-source contributions".

----------------------------------------------------------------

Proposition 2:

• OpenFOAM
  • OpenFOAM News & Announcements
    • OpenFOAM Announcements from ESI-OpenCFD
    • OpenFOAM Announcements from Other Sources
  • OpenFOAM Installation
  • OpenFOAM Meshing & Mesh Conversion
    • OpenFOAM Native Meshers: blockMesh
    • OpenFOAM Native Meshers: snappyHexMesh and Others
    • OpenFOAM Mesh Utilities
    • OpenFOAM Meshing Format & General Technical
  • OpenFOAM Pre-Processing
  • OpenFOAM Running, Solving & CFD
  • OpenFOAM Post-Processing
  • OpenFOAM Programming & Development
  • OpenFOAM Verification & Validation
  • OpenFOAM Bugs
  • Interfacing and Extending with OpenFOAM technology
    • Installating OpenFOAM on Windows, Mac and other Unsupported Platforms
    • Gmsh
    • Netgen
    • CGNS
    • Ansys, ICEM, GridPro, etc...
      
    • Star-CD and Star-CCM+
    • Pointwise
    • Ansa
    • Paraview & paraFoam
    • DAKOTA (Design Analysis Kit for Optimization and Terascale Applications)
    • HelyxOS
    • Discretizer
    • swak4Foam and PyFoam
    • wave2Foam
    • solidMechanics
    • ...

Notes about proposition 2:

• The sub-forum title "Interfacing and Extending with OpenFOAM technology" is still open to discussion.
• The forums related to open-source and closed source meshing and post-processing are moved to designated sub-forums.
• The objective is to have as many sub-forums as possible in "Interfacing and Extending with OpenFOAM technology", to reflect as many possibilities as they exist, although this might be not be very practical at first...
• The list is not ordered yet, as it partially retains the order from the original structure; and not all possibilities were added, since a complete list still has to be created.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Best regards,
Bruno

[wyldckat]

Greetings to all!

OK, I've gotten the word that this is to go forward. The 2nd proposition structure seems to be the more organized one, so we'll be going with it.

This post is therefore a draft working towards the solution to be implemented. Please give comments on what can be updated on this list below.

Notes about what each text formats refer to in this draft:

• Already existing (sub)forum titles don't have format modifiers.
• Bold threads are the new (sub)forums.
• Bold and underlined threads are sub-forums that have been moved/renamed/split from an existing sub-forum in the current structure.
• Italic text is the short description for the respective new sub-forum, for clarity.
• In parenthesis are some auxiliary notes for this draft.

Drafting Proposition 2 for implementation:

• OpenFOAM
  • OpenFOAM News & Announcements
    • OpenFOAM Announcements from ESI-OpenCFD
    • OpenFOAM Announcements from Other Sources
  • OpenFOAM Installation
  • OpenFOAM Meshing & Mesh Conversion
    • OpenFOAM Native Meshers: blockMesh
    • OpenFOAM Native Meshers: snappyHexMesh and Others
    • OpenFOAM Mesh Utilities
    • OpenFOAM Meshing Format & General Technical
  • OpenFOAM Pre-Processing
  • OpenFOAM Running, Solving & CFD
  • OpenFOAM Post-Processing
  • OpenFOAM Programming & Development
  • OpenFOAM Verification & Validation
  • OpenFOAM Bugs
  • Interfacing and Extending with OpenFOAM technology - Discussions on using any 3rd party software with OpenFOAM, including any and all contributions by the community that uses OpenFOAM technology. Use existing sub-forums for their respective topics, but if they don't exist yet, ask here. For discussions on how to create new or modify existing solvers and utilities in OpenFOAM, use the dedicated sub-forum "OpenFOAM Programming & Development".
    
    • Installating OpenFOAM on Windows, Mac and other Unsupported Platforms - Discussions on how to compile/build/install OpenFOAM technology on any unsupported platform. (Note: it might make some sense to split off a couple of sub-forums, one for Mac OS X and another for Windows)
    • Gmsh - Discussions on how to use this mesh generator for creating meshes compatible with OpenFOAM.
    • Netgen - Discussions on how to use this mesh generator for creating meshes compatible with OpenFOAM.
    • CGNS - Discussions on how to use convert meshes and results to and from this data-file format for use with OpenFOAM.
    • Salome and Salome-Meca - Discussions mostly on how to use this mesh generator for creating meshes compatible with OpenFOAM, as well as any other topics on using them with OpenFOAM. It's advisable that any other topic on using Salome and Salome-Meca should be asked on their respective forums. Relevant websites:
      • http://www.salome-platform.org/
        • http://www.salome-platform.org/forum
          
      • http://www.code-aster.org/V2/spip.php?article303
        • http://www.code-aster.org/forum2/
          
    • Ansys: ICEM, CFX, TGrid, etc... - Exporting and importing meshes/results between OpenFOAM technology software created/licensed by Ansys.
      
    • CD-adapco: Star-CD and Star-CCM+ - Exporting and importing meshes/results between OpenFOAM technology and software created/licensed by CD-adapco.
      
    • Pointwise
      • (This one is likely pointless, it's best to simply redirect people to the dedicated Pointwise forum)
    • Ansa
      • (This one is likely also pointless, it's best to simply redirect people to the dedicated ANSA forum)
    • GridPro
      • (This one is likely also pointless, it's best to simply redirect people to the dedicated GridPro forum)
    • Paraview & paraFoam - Discussions on how to use ParaView to pre/post-processing data with OpenFOAM cases
    • DAKOTA - Discussions on using the Design Analysis Kit for Optimization and Terascale Applications for optimizingmeshes and simulations performed with OpenFOAM techonology. Relevant websites:
      • http://dakota.sandia.gov/
      • http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Si...l_Optimization
      • http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Installation/Dakota
    • MATLAB, Octave, Scilab, Python and other alternatives - Discussions on how to use MATLAB, Octave, Scilab, Python (scientific software stacks) and any similar alternatives with OpenFOAM, on the topics of pre-processing, post-processing, data conversion and work-flow control. Unrelated questions to interfacing with OpenFOAM should be asked on their dedicated forums.
    • gnuplot - Discussions on how to post-process OpenFOAM data with gnuplot
    • matplotlib - Discussions on how to post-process OpenFOAM data with matplotlib.
      • (Note: possibly merge-able with gnuplot or the Python one?)
    • C, C#, FORTRAN, Pascal... - General programming discussions on using coding languages other than C++ and Python for directly or indirectly interfacing with OpenFOAM technology
      • Note: Discussions on using pythonFlu, PyFoam and swak4Foam are available in their respective forums
        
    • Discretizer - Discussions about Discretizer and Discretizer::Setup: http://sourceforge.net/projects/discretizer/
    • Helyx-OS - Discussions about Helyx-OS:http://sourceforge.net/projects/helyx-os/
    • swak4Foam and PyFoam - Including groovyBC, funkySetFields,simpleFunctionObjects, etc... Wiki pages:
      • http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Contrib/swak4Foam
      • http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Contrib/PyFoam
      • http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Contrib/groovyBC
      • http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Co...funkySetFields
      • http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Co...unctionObjects
        
    • waves2Foam - Discussions related to this toolkit: https://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Contrib/waves2Foam
    • IHFOAM - Discussions related to this toolkit: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Contrib/IHFOAM
    • solidMechanics - Discussions related to this toolkit: https://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/C...solidMechanics
    • cfMesh - Discussions related to this meshing toolkit: https://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/E...ilities/cfMesh
    • pythonFlu - Discussions related to this toolkit: http://pythonflu.wikidot.com

Notes about this structure:

• The sub-forum title "Interfacing and Extending with OpenFOAM technology" is still open to discussion.
• The forums related to open-source and closed source meshing and post-processing are moved to designated sub-forums.
• The objective is to have as many 3rd-party related sub-forums as possible within "Interfacing and Extending with OpenFOAM technology", to reflect as many possibilities as they exist, although this might be not be very practical at first... therefore is might make more sense to bundle some groups, as done above for "programming languages other than C++" and for grouping "MATLAB/Octave and similar".
• Sticky threads will be created within each sub-forum, as time passes to assist in users to understand what's discussable on each sub-forum, directing them to the correct discussing locations where applicable and also for keeping a "bookmark list" for the more relevant threads that are being discussed on that sub-forum. This way we should also be able to increase the odds of people investing a bit of their time in creating public documents based on information gathered on these forums.
  • In addition, sticky threads will also be added to the existing sub-forums, to make it clearer what should be discussed on each sub-forum.

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Anything missing or broken? This draft is still open to ideas/improvements, possibly even after the structure has begun to be implemented.


Best regards,
Bruno