[tj22]

I am pretty sure I read that open foam support has a binary format. Is this the case? If so can someone provide me a binary dataset so I can add binary support to my reader?

Thanks.

[hemph]

Hi Terry,
just change

writeFormat ascii;
to
writeFormat binary;

in system/controlDict in any of the tutorials and you will get binary output.

[tj22]

Thanks.

[tj22]

Question:

When I run the simulation in binary mode the meshes are all binary including constant. The problem is it seems as if the time data that exists at 0 (I think this data seeds the simulation) is in ascii. Should this be so? Also is this always the case, do you always have ascii data at t=0?

Thanks.

[mattijs]

No, the files that get read (restart files) can be either binary or ascii. This is decided from the header.

The restart files are quite often in the 0/ time directory (depending on what the controlDict says)

Files that get written get done so according to the settings in the controlDict.

[tj22]

Two questions:
1) "This is decided from the header" What are you referring to by "header"?

2) Should the restart files be part of the visualization?

Thanks.

[mattijs]

1) header: the 'foamFile' part of the file. One of the keywords in there is ascii or binary.

2) yes they are. Restart files are no different from files written during the simulation.

[maka]

Hi!

I always run in binary but some times I need to check some numbers inside the binary file. Is there a utility that can convert binary to ascii and reverse.

Thanks,
Maka

[tj22]

"2) yes they are. Restart files are no different from files written during the simulation."

except that the all seem to be ascii to me regardless of what is specified in the controlDict

[mattijs]

That is probably because they were written from the FoamX GUI. This is an exception and ignores the controlDict setting.

[braennstroem]

Hi Maka,

did you find a simple way to switch the format? One way could be to run one time step with a different format, but that's not very comfortable... Did you find a better way?

Fabian

[mattijs]

foamFormatConvert reads (some) files and writes them out in the specified (system/controlDict) format.

[braennstroem]

Thanks!