[chandra shekhar pant]

Dear Foamers,


I am using SHM and found that, many times it becomes difficult to add the layers, even if able to add the layers, it always happens to cost the quality of mesh. Thus may be wanted to start the cfMesh. Before starting with the cfMesh some preliminary questions that I wanted to ask from the experienced users of cfMesh:
1. Is it ok with the openfoam 19.06 version and with ubuntu 16.14?
2. Does it takes a lot of space if I install it on my local machine?
3. Most importantly, is it free ?
4. Could any one give some link of installing it from scratch?


Hope cfMesh user had a good experience with it, and this post will help me to move from SHM to cfMesh smoothly. Thanks for all your help and time.

[Bazinga]

Originally Posted by chandra shekhar pant

Dear Foamers,


I am using SHM and found that, many times it becomes difficult to add the layers, even if able to add the layers, it always happens to cost the quality of mesh. Thus may be wanted to start the cfMesh. Before starting with the cfMesh some preliminary questions that I wanted to ask from the experienced users of cfMesh:
1. Is it ok with the openfoam 19.06 version and with ubuntu 16.14?
2. Does it takes a lot of space if I install it on my local machine?
3. Most importantly, is it free ?
4. Could any one give some link of installing it from scratch?


Hope cfMesh user had a good experience with it, and this post will help me to move from SHM to cfMesh smoothly. Thanks for all your help and time.

I can only talk about the free version 1.1.

1. Yes
2. No
3. There is a free and commercial version
4. It should come preinstalled with of1906. Otherwise, check the website of cfmesh.

I found for some cases cfMesh performed better regarding recognizing geometry shapes, though sometimes SHM is superior.
Regarding layers, cfMesh is often better for the layers, but the customization of layers is still not as I would like it.

[chandra shekhar pant]

Great, Thanks a lot!

[chandra shekhar pant]

Hello Bazinga,


Many thanks for your time and help. If cfMesh comes with OpenFoam 1906, how to use it? Are there some tutorials? Is it similar to SHM (like scripting) or GUI?

I have a very huge geometry of turbine, turbine blade etc and if I am trying to mesh it using SHM, I could not obtain desired y(plus) values. What I have been usually doing in SHM is I put a single layer and then keep refining it using "refineWallLayer" until I obtained the desired y(plus) value. It's a bit time taking and iterative process. What you think, is it easily do-able using cfMesh?



I will rely heavily on your experience. Thanks again for your help and support.

[Bazinga]

Check the user guide (http://cfmesh.com/wp-content/uploads...fMesh_v1.1.pdf)

Yes, you can do layers in cfMesh too, but I was not happy with the options that v1.1 offered for customizing the size of the layers.

Getting an appropriate y+ value for complex geometries is usually an iterative procedure. However, reducing the first cell size by a certain factor also approximately reduces your y+ values by this factor.

[HPE]

- after getting popularity via OpenFOAM, cfmesh introduced cfmesh+ for which you need to pay. so not open source.
(my middle finger appears behind the scenes).

[chandra shekhar pant]

OOps..yup I can see your finger .

[juliom]

Originally Posted by HPE

- after getting popularity via OpenFOAM, cfmesh introduced cfmesh+ for which you need to pay. so not open source.
(my middle finger appears behind the scenes).

Although the post i old, I think it is still relevant. I've worked on academia and real CFD problems for commercial applications. Once you have to solve real-life problems, which thousands of bodies interface everywhere you start appreciating there are COMMERICAL tools available. One of the best meshes for external and internal flows is Fidelity Pointwise (Commerical and expensive). For multiple body problems, for example, CHT applications, nothing beats StarCCM+, hands down. Try to do a heat exchanger (a real one where the client gives you their CAE model from Solidworks with thousands of parts). Thinking about Snappy is shooting yourself in the foot. If you want to do only academic applications, Snappy, and cfmesh will work just fine, but once your life is at stake in a real-life project with tight deadlines, then you have no other choice.

I'm considering buying the cfmesh+ perpetual license. Among the commercial, this is the most cost-effective and it handles multibody parts. Pointwise does but it is too difficult sometimes.