UG/NX verses openFOAM
 

Hello, I have been using UG/NX Advanced Simulation for some CFD studies can came across a limitation. It seems that it is unable to simulate supersonic flows with shocks. So I have been looking to other CFD packages, particularly openFOAM.

UG is really easy to use once you know what to do, everything is menu driven and defining walls, inlets, outlets and where to measure lift and drag is as simple as selecting faces in the geometry, defining a fluid and setting a flow velocity. Like I said, very easy but much of my work requires the simulation of SS flows.

In openFOAM it looks like all this has to be defined in a .dict file. and seems to be a very long and complicated task but the solvers are apparently quite powerful. The tutorials provide some simple examples which didn't quite help enough. So I'm trying to see f there is a better way to do things.

In UG I define a fluid volume and simulate with that and leave the actual 3D geometry of the test article out. Is the process for openFOAM the same? Should I create fluid volumes for my test articles, mesh them and simulate them the same as in UG? Or is there a different process using the actual test article geometry to define a mesh?

I'm trying to use Salome to generate my mesh and would like to run analyses in Code_Saturne and openFOAM.

Any input would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Scott