Link drop

Hey there 👋

It’s Robin from CFD Engine & this is a new style of email for me, a bundle of links that I’ve been meaning to share with you, but that don’t really warrant an individual email.

Plenty of reading, even more watching & a cool little 3D viewer 😎

That’s it really – on to the links…

Shell Script Style Guide from Google

We’ve talked about writing good shell scripts in the past. Well, this is a collection of shell script best practices that Google uses internally & shares publicly.

It’s the kind of stuff that could easily start a nerd argument 🤓 but when there are loads of ways you could do something, it’s nice to have a document (backed by a huge amount of collective experience) that says “just do it like this” – a real time saver.

There’s also one for Python (among others) which you Pythonistas might like 🐍

FreeCAD Book

A good number of you mentioned you were using FreeCAD in our recent survey. If you weren’t one of them (or you’re just curious), you might like this eBook-article-PDF-thingy from HackSpace magazine.

An easy to read, non-technical introduction to some of the things you can do with FreeCAD, how it works & what to expect if you give it a try.

Check it out 👀

Engineering Design Optimisation Book

This is a beautifully laid out, approachable (& free) eBook covering everything from defining your problem, through to multi-disciplinary optimisation techniques.

It’s a graduate-level introduction to the topic, based on course materials from Brigham Young University.

This one is technical & at 500+ pages, you’re not going to finish it over lunch.

But it’s a nice introduction/reference for those of us less well versed in this subject.

There’s even a dark-mode PDF for some late night reading.

ML in CFD paper

While we’ve got our geek on, here’s an interesting discussion of what’s happening at the intersection of machine learning & CFD. The authors (Ricardo Vinuesa & Steven Brunton) are deep in this space & highlight some of the promising applications that we might see in the future.

Another really approachable read that’s devoid of the hype which often rides along with any mention of machine learning or worse, artificial intelligence.

Amongst other things, they suggest that future students will need a proficiency in machine learning. So, as we’re all future students, I’ll throw in a link to a machine learning crash course from Google 👍

Wolf Dynamics World

Speaking of courses, here’s an epic YouTube playlist from Wolf Dynamics – 1630 minutes of OpenFOAM v9 training 😲

OpenFOAM v9 too old for you? Here’s another of their playlists, this time 215mins of transitioning to OpenFOAM v11.

That should keep you busy. Subscribe to their channel while you’re watching, otherwise they’ll start using SU2 apparently 😜

f3d

Sometimes you just want to take a quick look at a 3D file & this is the app for the job.

Very minimalist (but very capable) this little app can quickly visualise a bunch of different 3D files on all major operating systems.

It’s open-source, has it’s origins in Kitware (the ParaView people) & it’s easy to install.

It’s arguably a little too minimalist, but don’t let that put you off – just remember to press h to get a little on-screen cheat sheet & you’ll be sorted.

Oh, & it’s pronounced fed apparently 🤓 check it out here.

Any more?

Do you like this format? Should it become a regular feature?

Which link was the most useful? What else should I check out?

Drop me a note, my inbox is always open.

Until next week, stay safe,