Issue 078 – January 8, 2022

In Case You Missed It

Hey there,

It’s Robin from CFD Engine & I’m back for 2022 with a couple of links to things you might’ve missed, especially if (like me) you’re just emerging from a mince-pie-induced coma.

Before I get to that, I just thought I’d let you know that the “plan” for OnCFD in 2022 is “more of the same” – useful / light / interesting CFD content, direct to your inbox, once a week 🤞

So, if you know anyone who might be into that, then do them (& me) a favour & point them towards cfdengine.com/newsletter to sign up – your help spreading the word is hugely appreciated 🙏

So, what did we miss?

New: OpenFOAM v2112

I’ll dig into this properly in the next week or so, but ESI/OpenCFD dropped OpenFOAM v2112 as a pre-Christmas present.

There’s a lot in there (as usual) but, at first glance, I’m liking the look of:

  • the new capabilities for expressions & Function1 – although to be honest I never quite got my head around the previous capabilities.
  • there’s a neat new way to report which defaults are being used in your cases, including ones you never knew about (see here).
  • the glTF post-pro export format looks interesting – I wonder if it’s lightweight, compared to other options?
  • a new #message directive allows you to dump messages into your log files to help with debugging – “if you can read this - my case is broken” type stuff.

I also like that they include a user upgrade guide & a developer upgrade guide with loads of little-but-important notes that you might otherwise miss 🙏

What’s catching your attention in the release notes?

New: ParaView v5.10.0

Kitware released ParaView v5.10.0 this week, accompanied by their usual extensive release notes.

At first glance it looks like it’s mainly “quality of life” changes – useful little bits that make #ParaViewLife nicer – but nothing revolutionary.

A couple of things that stood out:

  • The built-in OpenFOAM reader has a long list of changes, many contributed by OpenCFD. They’re mostly bugfixes & improvements to the way it reads-in / parses OpenFOAM cases, but they also includes a couple of new bits, like reading inGroups data & several Lagrangian-related developments.
  • There are new options for annotating things, a rewrite of the calculator & a “merge vector components” filter plus lots, lots more.
  • They now also publish binaries for Apple Silicon Macs, if you’re lucky enough to have one of those.

Switching ParaView versions is trivial, compared to switching OpenFOAM versions, so why not grab a download & take it for a spin?

Bonus: Video

If you already knew about those two announcements then here’s a bonus link:

I recently tripped over an excellent video by Steve Brunton on Machine Learning for CFD – ML seems to be attracting a lot of interest in our space, so perhaps it’s time for me to do my homework?

Steve has several other CFD-related videos on his channel – check ’em out if you’re at a loose end & fancy geeking out 🤓

What else?

What did I miss while I was in my mince pie coma? Any other announcements / releases that I should be aware of?

Any CFD-related plans for 2022 that you’d care to share?

Let me know, I’m always keen to hear what’s going on in your CFD world.

Until next week, stay safe & best wishes for a happy & healthy 2022 💛

Robin