Loading Cell Values in Tecplot
 

Hi everybody,

I am trying to use Tecplot 360 (2012R1) to post-process my openFoam solution. In this release of Tecplot, an openFoam data-loader is already existing, so I did not need to use any additional utility.

The problem is the following: as long as I understood,the data-loader somehow interpolates the solution data to find the values of variable in the points (cell corners). That's kind of cool, but in my case, the approximation due to this interpolation is intolerable, and I need the exact cell values (which I consider the original openFoam solution). The problem is I cannot see the cell centre values in Tecplot anymore. In Paraview, you have the option to choose between cell values or point values. I wonder if there is any way to tackle this problem in Tecplot. (I can swithc to paraview, but I am very reluctant to give up Tecplot with all its advantages just because of this problem.)

Any comment would be extremely appreciated. :)

Any thoughts on that? Do you guys think I should post it on the main openFoam forum instead of post-processing forum?

Greetings P1361,

I'll address your questions a bit backwards. First of all:
You have asked in the correct forum. The next possible forum would be directly in the dedicated Tecplot forum: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/tecplot/
Please follow the rules for the CFD-Online forums - http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/misc.php?do=showrules - in this case in particular:
I ask this because the time it takes us moderators cleaning up after members that don't follow the rules, equates to less time we have to help those who need help.

From the top of my head, I think you should have searched better here in the forums for questions about Tecplot and OpenFOAM, because I believe this has already been asked and answered somewhere here in the forums... :D

Let me go and search myself to see if I can find the posts about this...
By using the following search sentence with Google:
I've found the following threads/posts:

• http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...tml#post469998 - post #29 - There you'll find a very similar question to yours. But there wasn't a conclusion on what the solution would be.
• On this thread: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/tec...m-tecplot.html - you'll find a discussion about whether it was possible to see the center values in Tecplot. On post #3 you'll find something that might help, but there was no feedback whether it worked or not.
• There is also this thread: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/tec...ecplot360.html - but the only answer there doesn't seem to be the solution.
• post #73 on this thread: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...tml#post433163 - try using the foamToEnsight converter to see if you're able to access the data for the cell centers from the Ensight file format.

Mmm... if all of the above fails, it looks like next step is to contact directly Scott Rumage, as he indicated in post #36 on this thread: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...tml#post330364

Best regards,
Bruno

Heaps of thanks Bruno .. very complete and inclusive. Actually, I've seen some of these posts before, but couldn't solve the problem by them. I will give them a second try anyway.

All the best,

~p