OpenFOAM Pros and Cons

it si very customizable and free. The user guide is pretty complete Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

very difficult to learn. during the first months of use the road is very steep Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

OpenFOAM is a free software that can run fluid dynamic simulations with features on par with Ansys and is compatible with stl files created on blender or other 3D object generating softwares Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

OpenFOAM doesnt have a UI like Ansys or other competitors have, and its doesnt have a very intuitive documentation, so for a person new to fluid dynamics, its difficult to understand various settings/options available and would require understanding of many principles of fluid dynamics Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

OpenFOAM can be used for heat transfer problems, and fluid dynamics. It also has mesh generation utilities and can be used for complex multiphase problems as well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

OpenFOAM software does not have a GUI. It is completely based on C++ and thus requires some coding knowledge. There's a steep learning curve while starting with OpenFOAM. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Fully opensource and freedom to modify the source code. It also has good documentation and user base. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The inbulit snappyhexmesh still lacks the capability to create meshes with proper inflation layers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

OpenFOAM is open-source and free. It works for both Linux and Windows OS. The codes in Openfoam are written in C++ and the entire OpenFOAM can be automated using python. The visualizer Paraview that comes with OpenFOAM is handy for visualization. The software Paraview can also be interpreted by coding in python using Paraview libraries. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The coding of OpenFOAM is quite challenging to understand. Only a few communities of people work with OpenFOAM since there is a lack of resources for teaching OpenFOAM. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Implementing new features that interest you and benefiting from the existing architecture, which includes everything from efficient parallelism to moving mesh and topology changes, along with a large number of pre-implemented models and solvers, will make your work much more fun. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

If you wouldn't particularly care about using Linux, managing code organization and reading C++ can be a problem, but most people find it relatively easy. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

1. The flexibity to modify the code as per my problem makes it the best CFD solver for me

2. While other solvers serve as a blackbox wherein the users don't know what computations are going in the background, OpenFOAM allows you to view the entire code to have a gist of what goes into the making of a solver

3. Creating and meshing any geometry becomes so much meaniful and interesting once you know the concept behind it Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The only thing that is missing in OpenFOAM is the graphical user interface while the computations are ongoing. This makes it very difficult to monitor the desired parameters during runtime Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

OpenFoam for me gave me an amazing opportunity to learn CFD from the ground up in the sense of building solvers. I have become a daily user due to this. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nothing much to dislike. A kind suggestion would be to include more compressible flow solvers integrated with combustion related solvers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Open-sourced, the backend code can be modified and recompiled to solve new physics Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The initial learning curve is difficult and industry adoption is difficult due to absence of GUI Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's free,opensource, with advanced settings Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

GUI is missing and it requires a skilled user Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.