Using CAELinux

This page shows you how to set up using CAELinux

Downloading

Download the latest stable release

Configuring a Vitual Machine (VM)

You create a virtual machine (VM) to run on your existing system. This runs a bit slower but saves you the hassle of switching back and forth between running operating systems. You can also move the VM between computers and increase RAM (depending on what is available) easily.

There is some old info available: http://www.caelinux.org/wiki/images/f/fd/Install_CAELinux2008_on_VMware.pdf

Build VM

Here is how I set it up on Windows 7 using VMPlayer

  1. Install VM Player and download the CAELinux iso
  2. Start > VM Player
  3. Create a New Virtual Machine
  4. Select "I will install the operating system later" > Next
  5. "Linux" + Version "Ubuntu 64-bit" > Next (though 32 bit Ubuntu might be OK)
  6. Name the virtual machine and give it a location (e.g. CAELinux) > Next
  7. Max disk size of 20G should be enough > Next
  8. Customize the hardware for Max RAM as meshing is a RAM hog (maybe half of what the host has) > Finish

Start VM

Now get ready to start the VM

  1. "Edit virtual machine settings"
  2. "CD/DVD (IDE)" + "Use ISO image file" + select the CAELinux iso > OK
  3. Now "Play" the Image and set it up

vm_iso_disk.png

Configure VM

Setting it up

  1. Install CAELinux on the image (rather than having it "boot" of a virtual DVD iso every time) - double click on "Install CAELinux2011" icon and follow the prompts (will take a while to complete and a "restart now" required)
  2. It is worth setting up VMWare tools to allow funky things like display resolution changes, copy+paste etc
    1. Player > Manage > Install VMWare Tools...
    2. Double click on "VMWare Tools DVD" icon
    3. Right click on VMWareTools.tar.gz file an "Extract to..."  the Desktop
    4. Start a terminal: Applications > Accessories > Terminal (Note: any Linux distribution that thinks you don't need to a terminal easily is insane - so right click and add this to the panel, then start it from the panel)
      1. cd ~/Desktop/vmware-tools-distrib/
      2. sudo ./vmware-install.pl (requires your password)
      3. The above will ask lots of questions, just hit enter for all the defaults until complete
    5. Reboot

Running OpenFOAM MotorBike Tutorial

To do a test run of the tutorial provided do the following:

  1. Applications > CAELinux > OpenFOAM Terminal (you can also right-click add this to the panel for quick access in future)
  2. From the terminal enter the following commands - make a copy, change directory to the base directory of the case and start the run script
    1. cp -r /opt/openfoam201/tutorials/incompressible/simpleFoam/motorBike .
    2. cd motorBike/
    3. ./AllRun
  3. The run will take about 20 minutes and you can look at the log.simpleFoam for the result ("tail log.simpleFoam" will show the last 10 lines)

vm_complete.png

Visualising the Result

To view the result the best tool is ParaView but there is a trick. OpenFOAM uses a directory structure for all the results, however ParaView needs a single file to open. To solve the problem simply create an empty file in the base directory of the OpenFOAM case with the following command: 

touch motorBike.foam

openfoam_vis.png

More to come...

Tips for Using Linux

Talk about gedit, mounting a local file system, etc...

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