OpenFOAM is distributed with the FoamX utility to manage the running of cases.
FoamX is a GUI that can manage cases over a distributed network, e.g.
the Internet, although most often it is used to manage cases on a local
machine.
This chapter contains mainly reference material for FoamX, and while A.3 and
A.4 provide useful advice on the general use of FoamX, new users are first directed
to the tutorials (2) to learn how to use FoamX.
The mechanism for running cases over a network is to have a host machine
providing services that can be called from a JAVA GUI on another machine. The
interface between the JAVA GUI and these services -- a host browser, case
browser and case server, written in C++ -- is MICO, an implementation the
Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). If the user simply
wishes to manage cases on their local machine, the host browser and JAVA
GUI can both be launched from that machine. We shall refer to this as
normal mode in the following sections. Let us summarise the options
below:
host browser run locally (normal mode)
in this case the user can
launch both the host browser and GUI by executing runFoamX
runFoamX
host browser run remotely (remote mode)
in this case the host browser is
first launched on the host machine by runFoamXHB
runFoamXHB
and the GUI is launched locally by executing runFoamX which connects to
the running host browser
runFoamX
The processes involved in both these options are shown in A.1. When runFoamX is
executed, it searches for a running host browser. If one is running, i.e. previously
launched with runFoamXHB, it will connect to it; otherwise it starts a host browser
itself.
Figure A.1:
Options for running FoamX.
In A.1, A.2 and A.3 the general operation of FoamX is described with
particular emphasis on how it can be operated over a network. Following that, the
running of OpenFOAM cases through the case server is described in A.4.
Configuration issues relating to FoamX are described in A.5.
