windgen.org vawt discussion

So far I have written a script that builds the openfoam program on an Ubuntu system, but I'm still working on the viewing program (Paraview).  WIthout that it's hard to see the results.   I'm still working on it.

I'll wait.

Actually I had a breakthrough last night.  There is still hope.  Give me another week. :-)

I started working on my OpenFOAM help site.  My intent was to set up step by step instructions to lead someone through setting up the software.  I even cleared a disk and reloaded everything from scratch so I could do that steps as I wrote it to make sure I got it right.

I've run into a problem.  I'll see if I can describe it in a nutshell.

1) There are two versions of OpenFOAM.  There is OpenFOAM and OpenFOAM-dev.

2) Only the -dev version can rotate turbines.

3) The version I'm working with is OpenFOAM-1.5-dev and this is based on some software from the OpenFOAM-1.5 package.

4) OpenFOAM has been taken over by new people or the same people have tried to go more commercial (not sure which).  But they now sell support and only have their latest version, which is version 1.6 on their web page.

5) I've tried building 1.5-dev with the 1.6 stuff and it doesn't work.

6) I can't find any of the old OpenFOAM-1.5 package on line.  Only the latest version is offered.  (I have never heard of anyone not having their previous releases available.)

7) So the version of OpenFOAM that we need 1.5-dev can not be built, at least easily because the other package is not avaiable.

8) There is no 1.6-dev version and it sounds like there might never be.  The main guy who added the rotation features seems to have disappeared.

So there is one possibility, and that would be to gather up the various pieces of software that we need from other sources and build them.   This will be a lot of work for me, and for whoever wants to follow these instructions.

So before I bother, I just was wondering if anyone wants to simulate badly enough to be willing to do some work to get the software running?

If not, I won't even bother writing the instructions.

The other possibility is I could publish the package that I'm using in binary form, but that would only work for people with a 64 bit Linux running.  I don't have copies of the 32 bit packages.

Is anyone interested in the 64 bit version?