[kba-pro]

Hello everyone,
I am new here so please do not bite my head off if I post something "stupid".
I am a mechanical engineer with experience on CAD packages such as SolidWorks and NX but lately I have felt the need of doing CFD studies that surpass the possibilities of those packages.

I would kindly like to ask for someone nice enough to instruct me on the following issue: How to install OpenFOAM on a single computer running Windows 7 64 bit?

I know this question has been discussed on the internet, but please be understanding, none of the instructions that I have explored have been able to enlighten me on what exactly is required to do this.
All I have seen so far is a ton of links to pages where a computer hacker explains his life work to simple people while using abbreviations most of has have never heard before.

I would like to know the following:
1) What is required before I can begin my installation
2) Where to download everything that is required
3) What problems may I encounter
4) How to fix those problems
5) How exactly does openFOAM work

So far, I have installed paraview (fails to start because of missing QtGui4.dll)
I have also installed openMPI (error while installing: path is too long or something like that)
But please, I have little information on why was installing those softwares necessary. I only tried to follow these instructions: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openfoam21win64/files/ and nothing seems to work.

If anyone could be so kind and enlighten me about these things it would be very much appreciated.
Thank you for your time!

[yzeyue]

hi

I was also confused at the first time of installing.

First, u should download an installation package in the official website(not large).

Second, keep your computer online.

Third, run the installation package.

Other documents will be downloaded automaticly.

Regards,

garry

[kba-pro]

Originally Posted by yzeyue

hi

I was also confused at the first time of installing.

First, u should download an installation package in the official website(not large).

Second, keep your computer online.

Third, run the installation package.

Other documents will be downloaded automaticly.

Regards,

garry

Hey Garry,
Could you please tell me what is their homepage? I am even more confused now because I have seen information that there are no official packages for windows. Windows is what I am running on my computer. I did download the package from this page:
http://www.cfdsupport.com/openfoam-for-windows.html
But then I encountered everything just like I already described - very complex and incomplete installation instructions and nothing works in the end.
Thanks.

[wyldckat]

Greetings to all!

@Karlis: You can find a complete list of all existing (and all unofficial) ports of OpenFOAM for Windows here: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Windows

As for "free" ports: if you find it hard to install, then complain to the company providing the "free" version

Nonetheless, if you find the installation procedure difficult, perhaps you might want to have a look at the User Guide first: http://www.openfoam.org/docs/user/ - so that you can get a better feeling if OpenFOAM is what you're looking for

Best regards,
Bruno