Open Foam Tutorial: Simulation with 3D Geometry (.stl)

[@franckbismark1553]

Excellent ! Excellent ! Very impressive, clear and complete tutorial to introduce to snappyHexMesh. I searched a hole day for a good one without success. Thank you and I hope you will continue to help OpenFoam community.

[@philippz.2364]

Wow, so structured and well explained. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!

[@kekodosky2082]

best opemfoam vid i have seen so far

[@johnnyzhang6441]

Thank you! That is one of the best and simplest tutorials ever in YB. This one is really helpful to solve some simple geometry cases, thanks again!

[@dabarney2988]

Perfect length, perfect depth in a well structured form. Thank you Lily for the best 3D openFOAM beginner tutorial so far.

[@whosthisguythinkheis]

probably the easiest OpenFOAM tutorial to follow on YT, Thankyou so much!

[@Akshayoes]

Very informative and thanks for all the ques posted and received answers

[@igor_shepelev]

Thanks a lot! Just a couple of issues in preGeo folder files. 1) constant\triSurface\cylinder.STL > cylinder.stl 2) 0\omega - add closing bracket at line 49.

[@giovannyaltamirano5511]

Most useful comment!

[@nowsee415]

thank you very much , this is the best video about snappyhexmesh of openFOAM, looking forward more videos about it .thanks again!

[@Filipcorobivblenderi]

I think, we need more tutorials like this

[@frazze2113]

at 6:54 How did you get the quick command to show up in after you right clikced? :)

[@thatnicebee]

if i have different dimension of geometry , can i have to change it on 0 folder?

[@FoolishGamerYT]

i followed her instruction but the blockmesh doesn't run on the PC, why is that?

[@nihalsai7289]

how can I give material properties to the imported geometry

[@janchristianbailo6267]

hello, how did you make this preGeo folder?

[@manjunathshastry4853]

Hello, I am getting this error. Could you please help me. Reading surfaceFeatureExtractDict --> FOAM FATAL ERROR: (openfoam-2012) No surfaces specified/found for entry: cylinder.stl From int main(int, char**) in file surfaceFeatureExtract.C at line 305. I'm stuck here :( . I even checked whether the cylinder file is in ascii format or binary. I saved it again in ascii format, but it still gives me the same error. Could you please let me know what to do.

[@clemensjanzarik1473]

same here

[@clemensjanzarik1473]

Figured out the issue though, if anyone else has this issue make sure the stl file being referenced is renamed "file.stl" rather than how it saves as "file.STL".

[@aimannorsham3557]

How can I create other 3D geometry like square and then running this same simulation concept. can anyone help me out?

[@kazufu5315]

Does anyone have a problem with 0/omega? I got these lines: "Unexpected EOF while reading dictionary entry"

[@kazufu5315]

I got it. "}" was missing in my 0/omega. thank you.

[@philippz.2364]

​@@kazufu5315 Thank you for telling us. "}" was missing in my 0/omega, too. I whould have never find out without you ;)

[@manjunathrshastry257]

@@kazufu5315 Thank you. I had the same error and ' } ' was missing in mine too. I searched a lot and didnt get an answer anywhere. Thanks a lot.

[@datdhcmrlchtdj]

Thanks for sharing. Great tutorial.

[@hackernik6572]

But how do you create the blockMeshDict file? I just don't understand that part

[@docd7779]

Nice - big thanks, nice template for further exploring OF.

[@gilverrosero943]

Hello Thank you for the video. There is valuable information but i have an issue into my terminal when i run surfaceFeatureExtract into preGeo. This says: bash: surfaceFeatureExtract: command not found. why is this error? Thank you for the information that you can give me!

[@ash.d.writes]

From static bool Foam::entry::New(Foam::dictionary&, Foam::Istream&, Foam::entry::inputMode, int) in file db/dictionary/entry/entryIO.C at line 166. I got this error

[@frazze2113]

I am having problems when trying to use SurfaceFeatureExtract. Is anyone else having the same problem?

[@ztdep]

hi, how to run openfoam in win11?

[@eastonpal2487]

Excellent tutorial! It seems like the vertices' coordinates in blockMeshDict have the z-coordinate in the opposite direction from the diagram you drew @2:37. Why is that?

[@AY_Studios]

can you explain how you set up the terminal to automatically start running openFoam?

[@rahulnair2385]

can i perform this tutorial with other geometry?? I am trying but its not excecuting surfaceFeatureExtract step

[@elilawrence7166]

Hello, I'm trying to run the surfaceFeatureExtract, but a fatal error occurs saying that the cylinder.stl cannot be found. I have double checked it is in ASCII and haven't changed the name at all. Wondering if anyone else is seeing this.

[@dogsled101]

From below: Sumit Zanje 10 months ago @Nick Along with the above-mentioned suggestion, rename the "cylinder.STL" the to "cylinder.stl". Reason- surfaceFeatureExtractDict has name cylinder.stl and not cylinder.STL so it's not getting that file.

[@elilawrence7166]

@@dogsled101 Thanks!

[@antoine1407]

Have I put both files in triSurface? Could I just put the .stl file?

[@MrRajabMrwass]

surfaceFeatureExtract does not work anymore

[@dannydanny2220]

thank you, the cylinder works fine! I've tried to change the cylinder with my stl but I got some problems: my stl is a naca64 split in half simetrically but the simplefoam seems to compute the pressure only in the left half, so when I compute lateral thrust and drag with Paraview I get unconsistent results. Why this happens? Can you help me?

[@weomi247]

Thank you very much, it works perfectly

[@nazarinebeats5521]

Hi I need help please, i want to simulate a vertical axis wind turbine that uses Magnus effect, basically rotating cylinders, how hard it is to adapt this tutorial to test the VAWT in openfoam. All I have so far is an assembly of the top section without the generator. Looking forward to your advice. Tim

[@007aha1]

i dont get why the object is in the middle of the mesh

[@aykutgunhan436]

Thank you for the tutorial! I've a question about running surfacemeshextract. When i try to run this code, i got an error says: surfaceFeatureExtract surfaceFeatureExtract: symbol lookup error: surfaceFeatureExtract: undefined symbol: _ZN4Foam9UOPstream5writeERKNS_5tokenE I've been searching for a solution for the problem but i've got nothing, do you have any idea what this is about?

[@antoine1407]

@Killian Whyte Sir, I did as you said. I got: keyword surfaces is undefined in dictionary file: C:/Users/admin/Desktop/motorBike/system/surfaceFeaturesDict/motorBike.obj from line 20 to line 41. From function const Foam::entry& Foam::dictionary::lookupEntry(const Foam::word&, bool, bool) const in file db/dictionary/dictionary.C at line 799.

[@denislavzdravkov6979]

Hi, I come to the point of surfaceFeaturExtract and I receive the following message in the terminal: --> FOAM FATAL ERROR: (openfoam-2012) No surfaces specified/found for entry: cylinder.stl From int main(int, char**) in file surfaceFeatureExtract.C at line 305. FOAM exiting Any idea what happens and how I could run it?

[@raptormonkey253]

rename cylinder.STL to cylinder.stl, fixed the problem for me

[@chriswiese1348]

Great Video! Thanks!

[@aimannorsham3557]

Hi, may I know how did you created the PreGeo folder? I am creating a 3d geometry of a square. However, I couldn't do the simulation in OpenFoam. Can you guide and teach me on that? Really need your help

[@marc_frank]

this seems very complicated does it do nice graphs like openvsp vspaero does? i really like that but only analyses native geometry, nothing imported

[@estaykylyshbek8347]

I created all my geometries in Solidworks, and all of them are centered at the origin, but in paraview they do not align .

[@MrRajabMrwass]

The surfaceFeatureExtract utility has been superseded and replaced by the more general surfaceFeatures utility.

[@francootaola9172]

hello, can someone tell me how/what is the minGW function or uselfuness of it? i have installed openfoam with linux in windows, like openfoam web page says, and I CAN READ FROM THE MINgw web page that it is a c++ compiler, so i can imagine that is to use OF without the trouble of instaling linux? is that so? I would appreciate if someone can explain me...

[@marcind4795]

Thank you Lily!

[@vicgodlee]

Thank you! But when I ran the 'surfaceFeatureExtract' command, it appeared error 'surfaceFeatureExtract: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libedgeMesh.so: undefined symbol: _ZNK4Foam11regIOobject11writeObjectENS_8IOstream12streamFormatENS1_13versionNumberENS1_15compressionTypeE'. Does anyone know why? I'm new to the openFoam and it's better that could explain in detail. Thanks in advance!

[@bmtojo]

I was having a similar problem, remember to save the stl file as ASCII. You can open the Solidworks part in Onshape and export it as stl if you don't have access to SW.

[@vicgodlee]

Bruno Tojo Thanks, Bruno! I think I found the solution. The problem is “surfaceFeatureExtract” might be a old commander for openFOAM 8. I chose “surfaceFeatures” instead. It works fine now.

[@chuanzhong3977]

@@vicgodlee 哈喽，如果改用surfaceFeatures命令的话，那请问你是怎么配置surfaceFeaturesDict文件的呢？

[@vicgodlee]

@@chuanzhong3977 你好，直接在‘Surface’里面添加你的stl文件就可以，需要注意的是，你的模型里面不可以有‘洞’，也即是需要是个实体，你可以先用圆柱试一试。

[@nowsee415]

@@vicgodlee 你好，我也在学openfoam，可以加个好友共同交流吗？[e-mail]

[@vaishaliravishankar9752]

Thank you for this video! Although if I want to run a sonicFoam case on a 3D geometry, how do I perform that?

[@janzenlee275]

I imported my own geometry, but after excuted parafoam, I can't see it in paraview(Only a mesh cube I could see.) Could someone help me? Thanks

[@kingl5519]

I assume you ran blockMesh which is why you can see it on paraview. But did you also run snappyHexMesh before paraview too? If you did and that's not the issue, then it could be that you are viewing the block as a surface and your geometry is inside so you can't see it. Try changing the surface view to wireframe as in the video. Hope this helps.

[@janzenlee275]

@@kingl5519 In fact I had ran snappyHexMesh and turn the view to wireframe. I'm also sure that the cube point coordinates had adjusted to cover my geometry completely. That's confusing.

[@janzenlee275]

Ok， finally ，I find the solution， I should add -overwrite option to snappyHexMesh.

[@tommanuel2137]

wow, wonderful!! thanks

[@samuelreimer4590]

Hi Lily, Thanks for the great tutorial! This helps a lot with figuring out how to set up my own case. One question though, opening paraview I see the mesh block but no cylinder. Looking through the other comments having this issue, I've changed to wireframe, unchecked skip 0, tried adding -overwrite to snappyHexMesh, but I'm still having no luck. Any ideas? Thanks! Edit: Figured it out, if anyone is having these issues make sure when you export your .stl that it exports in meters (same page as where you change to ASCII).

[@pkbhattacharjee6318]

Awesome, Very helpful

[@tommanuel2137]

After running blockMesh, surfaceFeatureExtract, and snappyHexMesh (with no errors) I run paraFoam but don't see the cylinder. Any advice?

[@tommanuel2137]

Got it, have to check skip zero time under properties pane

[@TheAurora1993]

You can click PLAY BUTTON also!

[@marcind4795]

Hi Lily, After simpleFoam I got such error: No MRF models present No finite volume options present Starting time loop streamLine streamlines: --> FOAM FATAL IO ERROR: keyword direction is undefined in dictionary "/home/marcin/OpenFOAM/marcin-7/run/PreGeo/system/controlDict.functions.streamlines" file: /home/marcin/OpenFOAM/marcin-7/run/PreGeo/system/controlDict.functions.streamlines from line 13 to line 20. From function const Foam::entry& Foam::dictionary::lookupEntry(const Foam::word&, bool, bool) const in file db/dictionary/dictionary.C at line 570. Do you know how to solve it? Thanks in advance.

[@qzong3669]

Hi Marcin, I’ve fixed this error, maybe caused by the different version. I comment out ”#includeFunc streamlines“ in system/controlDict. (Openfoam v6)

[@SabbirHassan881r]

Please create more of these videos.

[@waranchitruengsrisang1077]

Thank you very very very very very much :D

[@yuqiwu6023]

Thanks for your share. But, there is an issue when I executed "surfaceFeatureExtract" command. The error is shown below. Reading surfaceFeatureExtractDict Surface : "cylinder.stl" Feature line extraction is only valid on closed manifold surfaces. --> FOAM FATAL ERROR: Cannnot read "/home/ywu9/OpenFOAM/ywu9-5.x/run/preGeo/preGeo/constant/triSurface/cylinder.stl" From function bool Foam::triSurface::read(const Foam::fileName&, const Foam::word&, bool) in file triSurface/triSurface.C at line 360. FOAM exiting

[@mohammaderaky2652]

same here I think .stl file is corrupted, you have to generate a new one

[@sumitzanje9660]

In the cylinder.STL file change the last line from "endsolid" to "endsolid cylinder". It will work.

[@mohammaderaky2652]

@@sumitzanje9660 I tried this it doesn't work, you could upload the stl file

[@sumitzanje9660]

@@mohammaderaky2652 Along with the above-mentioned suggestion, rename the "cylinder.STL" the to "cylinder.stl". Reason- surfaceFeatureExtractDict has name cylinder.stl and not cylinder.STL so it's not getting that file. Try this, it will work. Thanks

[@eastonpal2487]

@@sumitzanje9660 This fixed it!

[@pascalRubinstein]

Great video, but I'm getting this error whilst trying to run simpleFoam: --> FOAM FATAL IO ERROR: Unable to set reference cell for field p Please supply either pRefCell or pRefPoint file: /home/pascal/OpenFOAM/pascal-7/Worked_Tutorials/Cylinder/postRun/system/fvSolution.SIMPLE from line 39 to line 46. From function bool Foam::setRefCell(const volScalarField&, const volScalarField&, const Foam::dictionary&, Foam::label&, Foam::scalar&, bool) in file cfdTools/general/findRefCell/findRefCell.C at line 102. If anybody has any clues that might help, please share them. Thank you :)

[@kenbryanfernandez2454]

this is very helpful thanks

[@Naturalbeautyadventure]

Thanks you its very good one

[@georgeathanasopoulos3518]

Thank you very much!!!

[@zirgo8866]

you are awesome thanks a lot

[@ThomasLaverne]

Very useful video! Thank you very much for sharing (openfoam is a mess at the begining!)

[@elliott8931]

My university uses Autodesk Inventor instead of SolidWorks, and Inventor saves its files with the extension .ipt instead of .prt. I have also not been able to get it to work using these .ipt files. Is it absolutely necessary to have a .prt file? Is there a way to change what file the program is looking for? Inventor also won't export files to .prt

[@BobBeatski71]

I use Rhino for my models and export my data as STL. STL is what you want to be using.

[@BombermanOfComet]

Hello and thank you for this tutorial. I have an error message coming up, while trying to execute surfaceFeatureExtract which is looking like this: Create time Note: Feature line extraction only valid on closed manifold surfaces Reading surfaceFeatureExtractDict --> FOAM FATAL ERROR: No surfaces specified/found for entry: cylinder.STL From function int main(int, char**) in file surfaceFeatureExtract.C at line 307. FOAM exiting Do you have any idea how to solve this issue, please?

[@ungedrageset]

Hi, have you found any answer to this question? I have the same error message.

[@BombermanOfComet]

@@ungedrageset I have. The reason this command did not worked in my case was that i used OpenFOAM from openfoam.org at this time. And this variant did not had this command in its command folders. After downloading from openfoam.com, it worked. I know it sounds stupid, but in my case this was the solution.

[@王冠驊-m5j]

Make sure the stl file being referenced is renamed "file.stl" rather than how it saves as "file.STL".

[@ashok305]

does any one know how to import CFD result into Unity

[@AhsanKhanPhD]

I have a question, can someone please help me out? I want to run the solver multiPhase/interFoam/RAS/floatingObject but by default it runs with a cuboid body, I have a cylindrical body in .stl format and I want to use it as a floating object. How can I do this? Thanks to this video, I have been able to insert the cylindrical mesh in blockMesh by using snappyHexMesh, but how can I use the cylinder as a floating object? Thanks if someone can help me out, I am doing a univerisity homework :)

[@dheaputri4195]

excuse me, are you already finish about your work. because now I also have a problem similar to the one you are facing

[@TheAurora1993]

Hi! Nice video! When running simpleFoam I have a FATAL ERROR with this: --> FOAM FATAL IO ERROR: keyword direction is undefined in dictionary "/home/Desktop/cylinder/postrun/system/controlDict.functions.streamlines" I can't find that dictionary, can anybody help me?

[@orikojokro6677]

Run it with openfoam v5 instead of v7.

[@44bgood]

Great explanation! But that copy-paste-rename-delete workflow needs to be automated or something.

[@jayabratadhar]

THANKS A LOT :D

[@007aha1]

really gut thank you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@oleksiyyefimenko3299]

Thank you very much for presentation. It's very practical/ useful. Keep making research. stop splashing/eating during presentation!!! it's enrages! >/

[@editingstuff575]

allahına kurban Lily bacım

[@antonskyrda6645]

really, it do not working with me. I have tryed many times and it should be some magic to work perectly in this video. GIVE UP

[@Nuno_Ponte]

ok