How to run other tutorials included in OpenFOAM?
 

I'm very new to OpenFOAM so I am currently going through the tutorials on the OpenFOAM website so I can get a basic understanding of what is going on. However, the tutorials on their website only show a couple basic examples so I wanted to take a look at some more complicated stuff.

How do I go about running the circuitBoardCooling tutorial located under heatTransfer/buoyantSimpleFoam/circuitBoardCooling?

I tried following similar steps to the previous examples but it didn't work. I ran blockMesh from inside the circuitBoardCooling directory. Then I ran buoyantSimpleFoam and got a fatal error saying it could not find the file.

Now, I'm not sure if this is what I was supposed to do but I noticed in the Allrun file located also in the circuitBoardCooling directory it says to "cp -r 0.or 0" and then run createBaffles -overwrite.

Is this what I need to do to run this tutorial or am I not even close?

Thank you for taking the time to help this newb! :)

Hi BhaluBear!

I think you should run the ./Allrun scripts, or, if you want, manually execute the every steps in the scripts.

Best,

Lianhua

I was unaware you could actually run those "Allrun" scripts. What is the difference between the "Allrun" and the "Allclean" scripts?

Thanks for the help!

You can always look inside the Allrun and Allclean scripts to figure out what they are doing. You know they are nothing but shell scripts.

Best,

Lianhua

Quick answer: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/FA...in_OpenFOAM.3F

I'm in the same position as BhaluBear. The OpenFOAM user guide provides documentation for just a few tutorials. But many other tutorials are installed with the software. I understand that the Allrun script can be used to run any of them. However, is there any supplemental documentation for these other tutorials, to explain the models and the steps to work through them? Or are we left in the dark to figure them out ourselves by way of the Allrun script? If there is no offical OpenFOAM documentation to support them, perhaps someone is aware of any "un-official" documentation available out there to support these other tutorials?

Thanks in advance,
M Ridzon

@M Ridzon - Quick answers:

1. I wrote something on this topic of "why isn't everything documented"? http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...tml#post595350 - post #2
2. It's a bit of a "follow the yellow brick road" or "follow the rabbit into the rabbit hole", namely either relying on Google to look for more details, or looking into the links provided here: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...-openfoam.html
3. If you want a specific tutorial documented and you can't find any specific information about it online, think about contracting someone to write said documentation and making it public.

hey man,
Allrun is the process when you are running all the steps,. and Allcleanwhen you want to back the first step or after you run, you want to make the first conditions without running process.

@wyldckat

Thanks! I love OpenFOAM and think it has great potential. But I think it's sad that this powerful piece of software has such horrible documentation. I understand there could be funding constraints, but somehow that only inhibits the development of the documentation, not the ongoing development of the code itself. Perhaps the developers should take a hiatus from developing the actual code for a few years and instead work strictly on documentation until it is robust, thorough, and complete for any level of user to learn from (just my opinion and suggestion). I attended the OpenFOAM workshop last year in Ann Arbor and repeatedly, I heard about the desire to attract new users and build the community. And sadly, one contributor in a discussion said, "my team of research students often publishes stuff on YouTube for beginners, but the content is never checked for accuracy before publication and so it often has errors." Sad. At some point, hopefully developers realize that documentation is a vital piece to attracting new users. People like me who don't have a strong band of seasoned users around them, flounder around in OpenFOAM struggling to figure it out. Sad.

M Ridzon