Information about blueCFD
 

Hello :)

I am would like to use "blueCFD" on my windows machine and i need some information about this software :

Is blueCFD an official version of OpenFOAM on Windows ?
Is blueCFD using the same (solver, features, utilities, etc...) as OpenFOAM in Linux ?
What is the advantage and the disadvantage of using blueCFD?

I read this Post in the Forum, but i need more information :D
Could you please share with me, you experience with blueCFD.
How do you find blueCFD?

Do you know other ways to use OpenFOAM on Windows ?

Thinks :)

Hi,
blueCFD was introduced in a presentation
http://sourceforge.net/projects/open...SlidesOFW7.pdf

you can check out http://code.google.com/p/bluecfd-singlecore/ the singlecore version to get feeling what you get from the commercial version.
read what is missing
http://joomla.bluecape.com.pt/index....CFD-SingleCore - What is it?

Windows was never the primary focus of the core OF developers, that led to several projects to make OF available on Windows => blueCFD or http://www.symscape.com/product/caedium which is a product based on various Opensource tools among them http://www.symscape.com/node/808 http://www.symscape.com/openfoam-on-windows

My opinion: blueCFD is a great tool for those using Windows and want to get OF to work on windows fast.

Greetings to all!

Sorry for coming in late to reply. Disclaimer: I'm the one responsible for the development of blueCFD.

So, to answer some of Amin's questions:
Short answer: No.

Long answer: As Elvis indicated, there is only one official OpenFOAM version and it is only the one distributed by the OpenFOAM Foundation (essentially, distributed by OpenCFD/ESI): http://www.openfoam.org

And if you are wondering why there isn't an official version of OpenFOAM for Windows, read this official page: http://www.openfoam.com/legal/open-source.php


We do our best to bring as much as possible of OpenFOAM and related applications, from Linux onto Windows. And when using blueCFD's MSys terminal, the experience is nearly identical.


Advantages:

• No need to rely on:
  • a virtual machine;
  • or using dual boot;
  • or the need to have a second machine with a Linux Distribution.
• You'll use ParaView directly on your Windows machine, without worrying about graphics card drivers.
• If you're familiar with Windows only, it'll be a bit easier to use blueCFD, from the point of view that you don't need to learn how to use a Linux Distribution.
  But keep in mind that all of the difficulty inherent to OpenFOAM itself is still present!
• With blueCFD (not blueCFD-SingleCore), you'll get (limited) support in using blueCFD. In other words, you will not be completely lost in how to use OpenFOAM, since we'll assist you in getting started. We don't want you to feel that you've bought and installed a useless brick in your computer.

Disadvantages:

• For better or for worse, you'll be using Windows.
  • What I mean by this is that you should not expect Windows to perform as fast as Linux Distributions. Keep in mind that a lot of HPC hardware uses Linux, including the top 500 SuperComputers: http://www.top500.org/statistics/list/ - select the category "Operating System".
• blueCFD's port of OpenFOAM isn't as optimized as we would like it to be, so don't expect it to perform on Windows as fast as OpenFOAM does on Linux. The last run times we did are available here: http://code.google.com/p/bluecfd-sin...untimes202_211
• Although you don't need to learn how to use any Linux Distribution, you will likely still need to learn how to use the shell: http://linuxcommand.org/learning_the_shell.php

If you or anyone else as any questions, feel free to ask!

Best regards,
Bruno

Hi Paulo,

In blueCFD's defence, this feature for compiling OpenFOAM based code was introduced in blueCFD 2.0-1. Then was later improved in blueCFD 2.0-2 and 2.1-1 to be also able to build the complete OpenFOAM from source code on Windows, without any cross-compilation requirements! Well, as long as one uses the adapted/modified source code distributed with blueCFD.

Which is basically why the emphasis on documentation hasn't been as much, since I was focusing efforts on the feature itself :)

Nonetheless, the objective on the coming version of blueCFD 2.2-1 is to bring a somewhat more user friendly work environment... although a release date has not yet been possible to even estimate :( Basically because "new features take time to develop" ;)

Best regards,
Bruno

Hi
I think you mean Linux in and code.google is banned in Iran by google,could you please give another link?

Hi Ehsan,

Thanks! Fixed it.

We're in the process of transitioning the blueCFD-SingleCore project from Google Code to SourceForge.net, but it's going to take one or two months to complete the transition.

Best regards,
Bruno

edit: given the next post, I've emailed the page to Ehsan.

I corrected Lnux too!:)
I thought its only a table of time comparison between Linux and Windows!:)

Dear Mr. wyldcat. I am student and still new on OpenFoam. Before i knew BlueCFD Core, i used dual boot (linux&windows) in my PC whis is not convenient. I really appreciate and thankful to blue CFD Core which makes learning OpenFoam easier because no need to switch OS everytime i want to learn OF.

My question is, what kind of linux base meshing software provided inside the blueCFDCore? for example "meshlab, or discretizer or salome".
is it possible for user to add those free software inside blueCFDCore?

Thank you in advance, and i am sorry for my english gramatical errors.
Regards.

Greetings febriyan91,

You can do this yourself, by following the same guidelines that are available on our issue tracker for installing Gmsh: https://github.com/blueCFD/Core/issues/29
These instructions are scheduled to be added to a user guide, but we haven't had the time yet to do it.

The package for running Discretizer on Windows is made available on our blueCFD-SingleCore project here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/blu...s/discretizer/

We didn't add Discretizer and other meshers with blueCFD-Core 2016-1, because we didn't have time to test them.

Best regards,
Bruno

Thank you Mr. Bruno & blueCFDCore xD

Dear Bruno,

Hi. I am using blueCFD-Core 2016-1 and everything is working fine, Thank you for that :). Hence I wonder if it is possible to install Swak4Foam on it? I was not able to use "sudo apt-get install" to install the needed packages in my previous effort. Are there any ways around this?

Any help is appreciated.
Thank you.

Greetings Motjaba,

Quoting myself from what I wrote on another thread on this topic:
As for using something similar to apt-get, although MSys2 provides pacman as a package manager, but I haven't had the time needed to study how it works and to make the packages available this way. I do have plans to do that, but there are no planned release dates for it.

I'm expecting an official release of swak4Foam 0.4.1 to come sometime before or after OFW12, which will make it a lot easier for me to create at least an adapted source code based release to be used with blueCFD-Core.

Best regards,
Bruno

Just quick post: We have finally ported swak4Foam for blueCFD-Core 2016 and 2017. Instructions are provided here: https://github.com/blueCFD/Core/wiki...h-blueCFD-Core