I'm moving my home, after a bit of an absence. Thank you all for bouncing ideas around for this.
As mentioned months and months ago in another thread on here about OpenFOAM, I was intending to build myself up a linux server at home so I could try and toy with some of the freely available software, like OpenFOAM (it is, by the way, a total pain in the butt to set up!)
Since I'm moving said server half way across Canada, I can't promise either resources, or results anytime soon. But, I am prepared to put in a bit of elbow grease, and try to keep notes on my absent minded explorations once I set up house again, so I can do so.
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My exposure and dealings with installing, let alone using OpenFOAM make me think of this analogy:
Having coal, sand, iron ore, and a furnace aren't the same as having a steel fender for my car.
That it's a big leap between the two for me, and most people, but I'm sure there's a few people on the planet that could make their own blast furnace and then blacksmith a workable fender, instead of buying one ready to paint.
But, I think I'd be closer to being in that smaller group of people who'd make the fender, IF I were privy to the knowledge and felt comfortable with the steps to do so.
The same goes with OpenFOAM. I've seen end results displayed that show it would do what most of us want. I'm not so sure at this point that I can acquire the knowledge to do so, yet. Everyone that's good at it, is focussing their knowledge on using the program, not building up documentation for newbie end users, at least!
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What this idea needs is a lot more doing, and a lot less pontificating (a.k.a. immitating "The Thinker" statue), and reporting back on successes and failures, while we fumble about with
- Setting up a server at home, so others can repeat your progress
- How to's on installing some of the free or close-to-free software available for CAD, model manipulation, airflow simulation
- Documenting our exploration into how the different available programs work, so that we figure out which ones are "best" for us to try and use, and/or modify
- Gathering resources (sites, article/book bibliographies, pre-existing HowTo's) so that there's less re-inventing the wheel
Maybe a sub-forum off of the Aerodynamics forum is needed in this case, to help persue this?
Either that, or say, people of like minds here can dig about, identify an existing forum for this, and we invade our little corner of it, to further our "I'm an amateur that wants to model my car in a computerized wind tunnel" agenda.
Right now, all our pokes about are too incoherent, unfocussed, and not collaborative enough so that any one of us can make reasonable progress. We can change that; we just have to put our minds to it.
