FAQ/Wiki

1 FAQ Section 99: Wiki

About this Wiki

1.1 Is this Wiki affiliated with OpenCFD/ESI ?

No. This Wiki is a community effort. Its aim is to give people a place where they can collect/publish information about OpenFOAM and related projects.

1.2 Am I allowed to contribute?

Yes. That is the idea behind a Wiki: if you have something valuable to say, then do it. If your fellow contributors think that it is inappropriate/erroneous they will edit it accordingly. But you'd be surprised how seldom this is necessary

1.3 I found an error/outdated information/missing stuff. Whom do I contact?

Nobody. Get an account and edit the information with the error. That is the idea behind a Wiki: everyone is an editor

1.4 If the policy is so liberal why do I have to apply for an account to edit?

In the past lots of accounts were created by programs (so called bots) for spamming purposes. As this couldn't be prevented with automatic measures it is now necessary that people apply for an account via this form. The application will be reviewed by a human (usually within a workday) and an account will be created.

To make sure that requests are filed by real humans that have an interest in OpenFOAM two things are checked

• A valid EMail-address (this is checked automatically by sending you an EMail)
• A short (200 characters) biography. Information of interest is your current affiliation, your formal qualifications and what you're using OpenFOAM for (or what you're planning to use for). Applications where this is nonsense or copy/paste from other places will be denied.

After the creation of the account almost all pages can be edited.

1.5 I have a valid account but am no able to edit some pages

Certain pages (most notably landing page) are only editable for admins. The purpose of this is to prevent vandalism and avoid the breaking of pages with complex layouts

1.6 Are there any rules to what should go where?

Yes there are. They can be found here. But they are a bit outdated. Most of the time common sense and looking at how other people did it is sufficient.

1.7 I want to help, but I don't know what I should write about

If you don't know yet what to write about, and even if you're still getting familiar with OpenFOAM, then use this opportunity to pick a topic for studying and documenting one or more of several OpenFOAM features, topics and projects, by picking one or more from the following lists:

• The category Category:Incomplete pages lists all of the pages that are known to be still incomplete. Feel free to browse through them and to pick a topic to study upon and to then add information to that page based on what you learned.
• The page FAQ/Wiki/Ideas provides a good list of ideas for new pages and for improvements to existing pages.
• The Installation page can always use more help, so browse around there and be sure to read the help sections at the end of each major installation topic.

1.8 I have some information (an event, news, my company ...) that I want to add to the front page

The front page is not directly editable, but there are certain places where users can add their information and it will be included. Information that can be added is

• Events: Section 2 of the front page
• News: Section 10 of the front page
• Learning (Training): Section 3 of the front page
• Links: Section 8 of the front page

Details can be found in this and this news-item

1.8.1 The News Item/Event information I added doesn't show up on the front page

This is discussed here. The reason is that for performance reasons the Wiki-software caches queries with dynamic content and changes might take a couple of hours to show up.

1.9 How to use OpenFOAM version templates?

See the page Help:Editing, section Version Templates.

1.10 How to create new OpenFOAM version templates?

The version templates are built in an hierarchical way, as demonstrated by the following list:

• Template:VersionTemplate - This is the main automated version template, which will automatically generate the image and the category for any version, as long as the correct options are provided. Further instructions regarding it are provided on its own talk page, but here is a summary/example description:
  • Template:Version2.2 - This is an example of a template page that simply has the following wiki-code inside it:

    {{VersionTemplate|22|2.2|V}}

    where:
    • The first option - "22" - is the version name for the image file associated to this version.
    • The second option - "2.2" - is the version number used for the category name.
    • The third option - "V" - is meant to either be "v" or "V", because some image files used the name "version" and others use "Version".
• Template:VersionTemplateExtend - This is the automated version template for the old Extend variants of OpenFOAM, such as 1.5-dev and 1.6-ext. Further information is also available at its own talk page, but here is a summary/example description:
  • Template:Version1.6-ext - Uses the following wiki-code:

    {{VersionTemplateExtend|16ext|1.6-ext|V}}

    The reasoning for each argument is the same as for the description made for the (official) OpenFOAM version templates.
• Template:VersionTemplateFoamExtend - This is the automated version template for the new Extend variants of OpenFOAM, which are named "foam-extend". For practical wiki editing reasons, the version template mechanism to be followed should remain the same, namely:
  • Template:Version3.0-ext - This is the template for "foam-extend-3.0", which follows the same version numbering as before, but the main Template:VersionTemplateFoamExtend will take care of giving the correct category name to this variant (fork) of OpenFOAM. The wiki-code used inside this version template is:

    {{VersionTemplateFoamExtend|30ext|3.0-ext|V}}

All of these templates use the same image file naming convention, e.g.:

OF_Version_22.png
OF_Version_221.png
OF_Version_22x.png
OF_Version_15dev.png
OF_Version_16ext.png
OF_Version_30ext.png

Therefore, be sure to use the same convention.

1.11 How to create new template images for the OpenFOAM versions?

Steps:

1. Download this package: Toolkit for creating OF version logos using Gimp
2. Unpack it in your own computer.
3. The files with the extension .xcf are the template files and are meant to be edited with Gimp. The files are as follows:
   • OF_Dev_Version_Major.xcf - This is for the old "-dev" variants of OpenFOAM 1.4 and 1.5.
   • OF_Ext_Version_Major.xcf - This is for the old "-ext" variants of OpenFOAM 1.6, e.g.:
   • OF_Version_Major.xcf - This is for the major version numbers of the official releases of OpenFOAM, e.g.:
   • OF_Version_Minor.xcf - This is for the minor version numbers of the official releases of OpenFOAM, e.g.:
4. The objective is to edit the desired template file and modify the text layer for the version number and update it.
5. Export in Gimp the resulting edited file to PNG.
6. As for the name of the file and upload to the wiki, check the section How to create new OpenFOAM version templates?