Preview mesh in Paraview
 

Hi
I'm getting to grips with the meshing in blockMeshDict, but find it frustrating that the only way to view the mesh is once I have applied all the initial conditions and run the model, then exporting to VTK and selecting wireframe. For some reason paraFoam does not work on my setup, so I can only use foamToVTK.

Is there a way to quickly export the mesh to paraView to have a look at it, after running blockMesh?

Many thanks

Gareth

you can use Salome (3.2.x) to draw the geometry and then create and visualise the mesh. When you finish, save the created mesh as IDEAS and then use the ideasToFoam tool to conver to OpenFOAM format. There is a tutorial about this at the caelinux website www.caelinux.com

hope this helps...

j

Hi Gareth,

another option would be to use the native OpenFOAM-Reader by Takuya Oshima.

It's the only ParaView post-processing method I'm using at the moment and I'm very satisfied with it. And - important for you - it's possible to visualize the mesh whether or not there are result files available for that case.

Best regards,

Johannes

Hello,

I am new at OF and starting to learn it with OpenFOAM 1.7.1 on Ubuntu 10.10 on VMWare Player. To develop a mesh using blockMesh, I follow the steps from the tutorial:

1. Edit blockMeshDict
2. Run blockMesh
3. Run paraFoam
4. View mesh on paraFoam
5. Quit paraFoam
6. Repeat step 1

My question is that how can I eliminate step 5 (and therefore step 3 in the following cycles) and get paraFoam to update and view the new mesh?

Thanks.
Son

Hi Son,

disable the "Cache Mesh" option (red arrow), click "Update GUI" option (green arrow) to enable the "Apply" button (just switch between On/Off all the time), click the "Apply" button (blue arrow). The updated mesh will be loaded and displayed.

Another feature, if you don't already use it, is to name the blocks in the blockMeshDict this way (be aware of "block_1" as a name for this block):

With the option "Include Sets" (yellow arrow) you can select the blocks to be shown in paraFoam. Disable the "internalMesh" option and select the blocks to be investigated instead.

Martin

Thank you very much for the tips, Martin. I tried them out and it works perfectly.

I only have do the "disable Cache Mesh - enable Update GUI - click Apply" once. After that, I just have to click on the button "Refresh Times" in order to show the updated mesh (I use paraView 3.8.1 which came with openFoam 1.7.1 package).

Son

Hello,

Im trying to postprocess a mesh that I created with blockMesh, and I want to inspect separetely some blocks that I have saved in a "Sets" folder. I followed what MartinB said, but the problem is that Im using Paraview 3.10.1 on Windows XP. I cannot find the properties listed in Martin's screenshot in the object inspector!

Does anybody have an idea?

Hi Mike,

you can use foamToVTK this way:
You will get additional .vtk files in the VTK folder and you can import the blocks independently.

Martin

Thanks Martin! It works perfectly :)