Hi guys

was just wondering.... many of us here are into cfd/fem/fv programming or are starting with it and would like to discuss our experiences / solutions / problems / thoughts etc. with others

i would like to propose the formation of a new discussion forum on "CFD Programming". The reason for this is that 'generally' there are many more mails from programmers and the people who read the main forum and dont do any programming as such be not inundated with our mails. also we get a lot more and specialized space to discuss our problems.

if you feel the same then please propose it to the webmaster at cfd-online.com as it is only possible by our collective efforts

-thinker

if somebody is not programming , then he is generally some CFD package.i.e. FLUENT , STARCD etc. There are forums for these already. So they should not be reading main discussions forum. I was taking it granted that main discussion forum is anyhow mainly for the programmers so its already a CFD programmers forum ! Isn't it ?

I agree with AMV. The number of posts per day that appear in the main forum is not very large. Also I prefer to have all the posts on the same page.

It seems to me that there are a lot of questions asked here about basic (or advanced!) fluid mechanics. And those who ask are probably wise; if you don't understand the equations you're programming, it's very easy to code bad physics into your program.

I find your remark not being very humble... Myself, I use both Fluent and Star-CD, but that does not disqualify me from being interested in general CFD aspects, I guess? Using CFD codes is often a matter of finding the best compromise between physical models, solution time and accuracy for being able o give reliable results. And these issues are mostly disconnected from the specific code I use. In contrast to many programmers that perhaps have found their engineering nirvana being so close to the core of fluid mechanics, I think that detailed programming issues are of a more specialised and specific kind than being the natural choice of discussion on a forum named "main forum". There must be more to CFD life than Fluent, Star-CD and programming??

I'm not sure if this would be a good idea. As someone said this main forum should be able to host this type of discussions also.

We haven't exactly been overwhelmed by long and detailed programming related threads here. Opening a new forum will not automatically create a new user-base which discusses CFD programming - we will still be the same users and hence we will not automatically start discussing more programming related things.

If we don't see this type of discussions here now we will not see them in a small dedicated forum either I think.

My philosophy is to open new forums based on the discussions we see here on the main forum - when a lot of commercial-code related things were discussed on the main forum and even created some tensions here, then I opened the code related forums, not before. We don't see a lot of programming related discussion here now and hence there is no need for a dedicated programming forum yet.

my purpose for suggesting a new forum for CFD Programming was not because i want a split in the main forum community or because a lot of the mails are on programming but to get a specialized focus to the group.

i wanted to operate on a different scale. many of us (like me) are in universities doing their masters/phd in cfd or related fields and would like to communicate with other students / experts in the field of cfd programming.

i would like to interact with people who r making their own flow solvers/ parallelizing existing solvers or simply tweaking fluent.

the problem is that there is no other such forum for us apart from cfd-online and i thought it would seem appropriate to make a new forum for these discussions as (once and if they start) they would take a lot of space on the main forum.

its wise for u to say that if the 'programming' related messages are 'enough' in number then we can make a new forum .... but i think the other way round is also true. if there is no other forum on programming , maybe the messages will never reach the critical amount.

Your suggestion strikes a chord with me. I check into the Forum to see what's going on and maybe pick up some ideas. I was retired about six years ago from a national laboratory. It freed me to explore some ideas which began about 20 years ago now. I am developing some new divergence-free Hermite finite elements for incompressible flow, and related algorithms. Though I have taken (and an taking) classes at a local university, I have been pretty much on my own, doing the mathematical development with the help of Maple and then implementation in Matlab. It is very difficult working alone with no one really to talk to.

I would think that with the internet, individuals from all over the world could work together, sharing ideas. Surely there must be others like myself with no way of getting together. I have given papers on my work at conferences within driving range of my home, including USNCAM13, FEF2000, USNCTAM14, APS and SIAM meetings. This Forum just doesn't seem to attract people who would be interested in issues similar to mine. There is probably one regular and one occasional contributor to the Forum who knows me. I don't know if there are enough people around to support a CFD programming forum, but there is at least one other who feels a need for something of this type.

Okay, I see you point. However, I'm not sure I understand why you can't have these discussions on the main forum.

Open question: Are there many others who also want a dedicated CFD programming forum instead of discussing these issues here on the main forum?

I have been following all these discussions regarding opening of a new forum for CFD programming discussion.Although I was indeceisive initially regarding this..but now i dont see any harm in opening a new forum for this.It can give us a nice focused discussion on this specific area in CFD. So thinker, you have my thumps up on it!!!

MP

Hi Jonas,

I agree with Praveen. This main forum should suffice in discussing the Numerical models/CFD programming in solving actual physical problems. I don't think by starting a new forum there is going to be lot of interaction.

Regards gita

A new forum dedicated to programming related topics would be a good idea.

sat down with a calculator and did this : as of this time and date, in the five forums (main, cfx, fluent, phoenics and star-cd), there are 2578 messages - in 3 cases posted from 4th-15th oct 2002, in one case posting from 27th may and another case from 12th feb. this gives an average (excl the last two) of about 14 messages per day. is the communication traffic too high ?

i suggest therefore that instead of having 5 forums, let us have only one, so that we will not be compelled to switch over from forum to forum. this will also give the opprtunity for package non-users to have a look in one shot at what is going on on the package front and vice-versa.

perhaps jonas will take the trouble of providing a kind of menu in 'post response' or 'post new message'. while posting the message it identifies the forum itself - click the menu item. the person who posts will be free from writing the forum - he/she just chooses the forum for it.

the posted message will appear as (example): "FLUENT - why vof convergence is slow ?" or "MAIN - stability of ADI with different bcs". add say 'PROGRAMMING' there for selection.

the thread length may also be increased from present figure of about 520 messages per forum to say 1000.

regards

While I like to see an heterogeneous forum, I also would like to read about very specific subjects, not only in programming of CFD codes, but in every aspect of CFD; turbulence, multiphase flow, etc, etc...

I think is time for a productive discussion on the future of the forum.

My vote is for a some especialized forums.

CFD newbie

First, off I think we all should be grateful to Jonas for providing this site, without worrying about having to make a few extra mouse clicks to another forum or weed through the help!!!! pleas for another student's CFD 101 project. I think this is one of the best sites on the web, and it must take alot of time and energy to maintain.

As an engineer basically using CFD on a daily basis, I find there are lots of good things here. We use a commercial CFD software program but still have to write our own code to customize it. Thus, I like to check out the forum for our software, look in general what people are doing in more fundamental areas, look at what issues there are with other commercial packages etc.

I wouldn't change this site.