Henry Weller recognised value in the new C++ language, adapted the code and published the first paper outlining the new approach
Thought to be the first major scientific application package developed in C++
What emerged was FOAM (Field Operation And Manipulation)
OpenCFD has since released OpenFOAM versions 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 and the latest, mid-2008 release, 1.5
Development more cathedral-like with a relatively small number of trusted contributors outside OpenCFD
Benefits greatly from bug and feature feedback of user community, particularly via the forum
Release 1.5 dropped the FoamX java gui, introduced snappyHexMesh for automated hex mesh creation, added an extensive lagrangian particle tracking library and made simplifications to interfaces for command line applications and utilities, among other things
Current OpenCFD development work includes automated polyhedral mesher and scripting via a C++ interpreter
OpenFOAM is written in and for Linux because the nix operating systems are much more flexible and powerful for high end computational work
There have been Windows ports of older versions (e.g. via cygwin) but no Windows support is planned.
Just use linux!... either natively or through a virtual machine such as VirtualBox
This page was last modified on 17 September 2009, at 23:56.
