A Beginner's Mind

Hey there,

It’s Robin from CFD Engine & I’ve had a couple of conversations this week that reminded me that “I don’t know what you don’t know” & I’d love it if you could help me fix that.

Essentially, I had a couple of readers tell me that they (or members of their team) find ParaView quite difficult to use/understand. They even lumped it in with Blender (they could’ve included ANSA or any other bamboozling GUI) in terms of how hard it is for first timers & casual users to grasp.

Now, I used to have some Blender-skillz back in the olden days, but they evaporated when the interface changed 😭 So, I can relate to sitting in front of a tool that you know is powerful, but you’re not sure (or can’t remember) where to start.

It’s been 10+ years since I was in that spot with ParaView, scratching my head over how to plot streamlines or puzzling over the difference between Slice, Clip & Threshold (when what I really needed was a Contour).

It’s coming back to me now, but I definitely need to focus more on having a beginner’s mind for some of these emails.

The goal here is to help you with those “quality of life” improvements that make your CFD a little bit more useful, enjoyable & productive.

I’m aiming for the occasional “oh, I didn’t know you could do that” or “so that’s how it’s works” – moments of clarity.

The kind of thing that prompts you to tweak your run script, or your case template, or (highest praise of all) to mention it to another CFD friend.

The problem is…

In order to create those moments I need half an idea of what you don’t know (which is tricky, ‘cos you don’t know what you don’t know) 🤯 but I’ll ask the question anyway…

Is there something about the OpenFOAM–ParaView CFD process that you’d like clarifying? Something that doesn’t (currently) make sense? Or something that makes you wonder if there’s a better way?

If the answer to any of those is questions “Yeah, how about…” then hit reply & fill me in.

That also includes any “CFD on AWS” questions by the way.

I’m banking on the idea that if it’s an issue for you, then its an issue for someone else too. But don’t count on them asking on your behalf – take your shot & let me have it.

In the meantime, I’ll carry on publishing stuff that I think you’ll like, but your help identifying the tricky bits is greatly appreciated 🙏

Until next week, stay safe