[hannes]

Hello,

initially for our internal purposes, we started a project to create automated workflows: InsightCAE. The software is open source and most of its applications currently use OpenFOAM as a backend. The project contains:
* a lot of functions to interface OpenFOAM cases
* extensions (schemes, function objects, models ...) to OpenFOAM
* some infrastructure and a GUI to handle parameters and simulation results
* a script-based CAD tool

The project uses CMake as a build system, also for the OpenFOAM extensions. InsightCAE is not tied to a specific OpenFOAM version but does support a large number of versions at the same time.

We have now moved the source code repository to Github: https://github.com/hkroeger/insightcae

We also started a documentation: https://github.com/hkroeger/insightcae/wiki


Please feel free to have a look at the project. Suggestions for improvements are always welcome!

Regards, Hannes

PS: See this screencast for an idea of how an automated process looks like from a user perspective: https://youtu.be/kxGlFxFQzPE

[hannes]

We have started to add some tutorials to the documentation wiki.

The first is about the OpenFOAM case builder tool (a lean GUI to create OpenFOAM cases from feature building bricks):

https://github.com/hkroeger/insightc...d%2C-Tutorials

[wyldckat]

Greetings Hannes,

Many thanks for sharing this project!

I've added InsightCAE to the Open Source section in the GUI page at openfoamwiki.net, namely here: https://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/GUI#Open_Source

I also have a few questions:

1. Do you accept source code contributions for this project?
   • And if you do, to which branch should we sync to and can we use the Pull Requests feature in Github?
2. From what I can see, only Linux Distributions are support at the moment? Or has there been any reports of Mac OS X and Windows been reported as successfully being used as well?
3. Is there a release cycle or are the latest developments automatically synced to the Deb packages?

Many thanks once again!

Best regards,
Bruno

[hannes]

Dear Bruno,

thank you for the credits :-).

Regarding your questions:

1./3. Yes, contributions are very welcome.

When developing, you should refer to the master branch. I do the active development in my personal branch "hannes_dev" but merge the results into master as soon as they proof to work. Usually in a weekly cycle but sometimes also more often.

There is yet no formal release cycle (Though I admit that I should define one).
The debian packages are automatically built every saturday evening from the master branch. Afterwards, a deployment test and some unit tests are run.

2. The software has only been used in Linux so far. All of the dependencies are available for Windows, the build system CMake also works in Windows and I tried to rely on portable solution with boost most of the time, so I see no principle obstacle to compile the whole project in Windows. I have just not attempted it yet.

Regards, Hannes

[hannes]

Another example: using the snappyHexMesh interface from within our script-based CAD tool:

https://github.com/hkroeger/insightc...esh-from-ISCAD

[hannes]

For those tied to the Windows operating system: we have now added installation instructions for InsightCAE together with OpenFOAM in Windows-10.

See: http://silentdynamics.de/en/oss-cae/#installation


The approach uses the Linux Subsystem for Windows and thus only works in Windows-10 Enterprise or in Windows Server. We are currently working on another solution based on Cygwin which should also work on Windows-10 Home and older Windows versions.

We will keep you updated.

Regards, Hannes

[Samsam2]

I am trying to install InsightCAE with "Build From Sources" method fined at :
https://silentdynamics.de/en/oss-cae/#insight_install
I am getting this error:
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:10 (message):
It seems that an OpenFOAM environment is loaded. Please build InsightCAE
without any OpenFOAM environment variables set!
How can I solve the problem?
Thank you,

[hannes]

Dear Samsam,

the OpenFOAM environment is set by parsing the file "bashrc" from OpenFOAMs etc directory.

When you run cmake, it tries to detect the different OpenFOAM installations on your system (well, those versions, which InsightCAE currently supports) and extracts the compiler and linker settings for them. This process does not work properly, if you have an OpenFOAM environment loaded.

So just open a new terminal without sourcing OF's bashrc and run cmake from that.

Regards, Hannes

[Samsam2]

Hello Hannes,
Thank you so much for the reply. I am using Ubuntu from windows 10 and I have tried running cmake from new terminal. still getting the same error. Do you know how I can open a new terminal without sourcing OF's bashrc?
Thank you,

[Samsam2]

I am getting following error in insight CAE installation:
CMake Error at CMake/FindOpenFOAM-esi1806.cmake:36 (string):
string sub-command REGEX, mode REPLACE needs at least 6 arguments total to
command.
when I am searching in CMakeLists. txt there is no REGEX in code!! How Can I solve the problem?
Thank you,

[neznayer]

1 # echo deb http://downloads.silentdynamics.de/ubuntu xenial main > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sd.list
2 # apt-key adv --fetch-keys http://downloads.silentdynamics.de/S...PUBLIC_KEY.gpg
3 # apt-get update
4 # apt-get install insightcae-base openfoamplus-insightcae

after 2, I get
gpg: requesting key from 'http://downloads.silentdynamics.de/SD_REPOSITORIES_PUBLIC_KEY.gpg'
gpg: connecting dirmngr at '/tmp/apt-key-gpghome.qInqdYEuDE/S.dirmngr' failed: IPC connect call failed
gpg: WARNING: unable to fetch URI http://downloads.silentdynamics.de/S...UBLIC_KEY.gpg: No dirmngr

Well since it says only 'Warning', not 'Error' , I tried to continue. But 3 gives me:

.....
The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 9D33DF172468FD2C
Err:4 http://downloads.silentdynamics.de/ubuntu bionic InRelease
The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 9D33DF172468FD2C
Reading package lists... Done
W: GPG error: http://downloads.silentdynamics.de/ubuntu xenial InRelease: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 9D33DF172468FD2C
E: The repository 'http://downloads.silentdynamics.de/ubuntu xenial InRelease' is not signed.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
.....

What should I do in such case?

And, I've already installed OpenFoam 7 , and this part

4 # apt-get install insightcae-base openfoamplus-insightcae

will install the OpenFoam the second time?

[hannes]

Dear neznayer,

Originally Posted by neznayer

after 2, I get
gpg: requesting key from 'http://downloads.silentdynamics.de/SD_REPOSITORIES_PUBLIC_KEY.gpg'
gpg: connecting dirmngr at '/tmp/apt-key-gpghome.qInqdYEuDE/S.dirmngr' failed: IPC connect call failed
gpg: WARNING: unable to fetch URI http://downloads.silentdynamics.de/S...UBLIC_KEY.gpg: No dirmngr

I'm not sure why you can't fetch the key. Maybe some network issue? Do you use a proxy?

You might try this alternative way, maybe that works:

curl -sL "http://downloads.silentdynamics.de/SD_REPOSITORIES_PUBLIC_KEY.gpg" | sudo apt-key add

Originally Posted by neznayer

Well since it says only 'Warning', not 'Error' , I tried to continue. But 3 gives me:



What should I do in such case?

You might try to add the option "--allow-unauthenticated" to the apt-get call (see here).

Originally Posted by neznayer

And, I've already installed OpenFoam 7 , and this part

will install the OpenFoam the second time?

Yes.

Our idea is to provide an execution-ready installation of our software along with a compatible version of OpenFOAM. We adhere to ESI's release of OpenFOAM and we mostly use v1806 currently. But we are in the process to update to v1906 (which is still based on OF6).

If you want to use InsightCAE with some other installation of OpenFOAM, you will need to build it from the sources (see https://silentdynamics.de/en/oss-cae/#insight_install / "Build From Sources").

[hannes]

Just an update:
for those who struggle with the installation: we have installation packages for Ubuntu Bionic and Xenial available, as well as for CentOS 7.

Also, we have meanwhile invested some work in improving the graphical preview of analyses in our GUI and the OpenFOAM case builder.

There are some sample workflows included in InsightCAE that can also be directly useful for many applications and which now use the graphical preview features. I started to write some documentation for the first of them: the "Numercial Wind Tunnel".

see https://silentdynamics.de/en/insight...al-Wind-Tunnel

It basically does incompressible, isothermal flow around an object sitting on the floor, everything wrapped in a rather simple GUI application.

Regards, Hannes

[Ahyar]

i was trying to do installation, but when i try to run

ccmake ../insight-src

and press c, i found this

"CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:3 (cmake_policy):
Policy "CMP0078" is not known to this version of CMake.



CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:4 (cmake_policy):
Policy "CMP0086" is not known to this version of CMake.



CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:15 (message):
It seems that an OpenFOAM environment is loaded. Please build
InsightCAE
without any OpenFOAM environment variables set!
"
how to fix this? thanks

[hannes]

Hi Ahyar,

looks like your version of CMake is too old.

Currently we develop using version 3.18.2.

The last message indicates that you executed cmake in a shell which sources OpenFOAM's bashrc in it's startup script. InsightCAE's CMake scripts can handle multiple parallel installed OpenFOAM versions. When an OpenFOAM environment is loaded, this causes some problems with the autodetection. Thus you should build InsightCAE in a pristine environment.

Regards, Hannes

[Ahyar]

thanks for your response hannes
then what should i do to install it? should i install newest version of cmake or install insightcae on pristine environment? if so, how could i install it on pristine env?

[hannes]

Yes, cmake-3.18 is default in Ubuntu Focal. If you are on another distribution, just download and install the latest version from cmake.org.

To produce a pristine environment: just comment out the "source /path/to/OF/bashrc" statement in you ~/.bashrc. Personally, I use aliases for loading the OF environment only, if I need it.

[j2l]

unfortunately install is broken on recent ubuntu because`apt-key` is not working anymore and even using an ubuntu 20 container didn't work (Qt plateform didn't like the container way).


Do you plan to update it for Ubuntu 21, or maybe 22?
Thank you

[hannes]

Dear Phil,

we use and test the packages with the current Ubuntu LTS only.

Also the master branch version (I guess you used that, because our website instructions lead to it) is quite old already. During the next month, we will publish the next major release and update it. In the meanwhile you might try our "next_release" development build.
Just use the repository URL
http://downloads.silentdynamics.de/ubuntu_dev
instead (note the trailing "_dev")

Regards, Hannes

[j2l]

Thank you Hannes for this detailed reply.
By downloading the deb packages I finally run it on Ubuntu 21.

I'd be glad to test a more recent version.