The Open source CFD seems to be getting more competitive these days and guess what we are now having three different versions of OpenFOAM. Isn't that great but again adding to a bit of confusion as well, which version should I really use. Well lets clarify some of the things for now beginning with the Foam hierarchy as shown below
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| Figure taken from a LinkedIn article on OpenFOAM who's who. |
Well so as we can see we have three different versions released by the OpenFOAM Foundation, OpenCFD-ESI Group and Foam-Extend. So what really differs in each of these, let find out
1. OpenFOAM 4.0 - This is the official Foam release and has a lot of new features added with it from its previous version. OpenFOAM foundation releases this version and this one seems to be the quickest release ( 6 months ) then all the prior ones. I would always prefer for going for this release to keep the originality.
2. OpenFOAM v1606+ - This version is released by OpenCFD-ESI Group and comes with a lot of add on solvers used by Industry and some really cool post-processing options as well. The version naming is done as year and month of release with a +. One can look at the features offered by this software and use it for solving problems.
3. foam-extend - Here you will get some of the most extensive solvers which are not available in either of the above Foam. The solvers are mainly contributed by OpenFOAM users / developers globally.
So finally to end the confusion it really doesn't matter much about what Foam version you want to use till the time it really solves your engineering problem. Once again, happy Foaming!!! :)
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