Geometries BlockMesh
 

How I can interstect to geometries in OpenFOAM. I mean if for instance I have a simple geometry, letś say a cube and I want to add a cylinder on one of the faces, would I have to edit the blockmesh dictionary?
Thanks, any help on this will be appreciated.

Greetings cesarjets,

That is not an easy task to do with blockMesh. My advice, try using SwiftBlock: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Contrib/SwiftBlock

Best regards,
Bruno

Greetings wyldckat;

Right thanks much for your reply. you think that maybe to design a geometry like this it would be even a bit easier to do it in a CAD software and import it as a STL file?

Thank you,

Hi cesarjets,

It all depends on your objective. blockMesh currently is not able to use STL files as vertex data for the surface mesh, so you'll have to rely on some other mesher to do the meshing for you.

The difference is that with blockMesh you have (almost) full control over how the mesh is created and therefore are able to do some dedicated meshes. This is useful for keeping the cell count to a minimum, and to keep out parasitical cells (really small and/or contorted cells), but it's a major pain to create manually and/or with SwiftBlock.

AFAIK, people usually go with the simpler solution and rely on a mesher to do the heavy lifting for them. It's easier this way in most of situations, but don't expect it to be too easy either! ;)

Best regards,
Bruno

Hi wyldckat;

Well, yes you're right regarding blockMesh using STL files. I was not so clear. I mean STL files with SnappyMesh? I think it certainly can deal with STL files right?
Thanks much

Hi cesarjets,

Sorry for the late reply.
Yes, snappyHexMesh can certainly handle STL files. But make sure that the STL is good enough, by running OpenFOAM's surfaceCheck on the STL file.

A bit more on this topic: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...d-surface.html

Best regards,
Bruno