#232 ensight data format in swak4foam for foam-extend-3.2

[Eelco van Vliet]

In the openfoam 2.x branch, swak4foam had the option to write surfaces (sample planes) with the ensight file format. For instance

planesAndContours
{
type surfaces;
outputControl outputTime;
fields ( U alpha1 );
surfaceFormat foamFile;
surfaces (
normalPlane {
type plane;
basePoint (0 0 0);
normalVector (0 0 1);
interpolate false;
}
);
interpolationScheme cellPointWallModified;
}

Ensight is much more efficient than vtk, as with ensight the data and mesh a written in separare files, which allows you to replace all the mesh files with a symbolic link to the first mesh file.
This will reduce the data storage of sample planes with 75% because vtk write X,Y,Z,T for eacht time step (assuming that you are writing a scalar called T), whereas ensight only write T. X, Y, Z are indentical for eacht time step so can be replaced with symbolic links

Unfortunately in the foam-extended-3.2 branch ensight was taken out of the list. There is an option to write foamFile surfaceFormat which also splits the data and the mesh, however, I don't have a clue how to openfoam these file in paraview

I was wondering if writing to ensight could also be included to the swak4foam coming with the foam-extended-3.2.

Regards
Eelco

[Bernhard Gschaider]

The "surfaces" function-object is not part of swak but of OpenFOAM/foam-extend. surfaceFormat selects from the writers implemented by that distro and it seems that foam-extend doesn't implement an ensight writer. If the interface hasn't changed it should be easy to pull the sources from OF put them into a library of their own and load that library via libs. The runtime-selection mechanism makes sure that this format is now also available. Something like this has been done with the MTV-format for surface data which is available in the simpleFunctionObjects (but I haven't tested it in a long time)

[Eelco van Vliet]

Thanks for the hint. I have tried to compile the ensight writer from OF 2.1.1 in the foam-extened-3.2 but get some many non resolved definitions that I think this is not so straight forward. Both OF version have diverged quite a lot a the moment probably.
Well, if you have any suggestion which OF version I could use to compile the ensight directory within 3.2 please let me know. Otherwise I will leave it from here for the moment.
Regards
Eelco