# OpenFOAM Reviews **Vendor:** OpenFOAM Project **Category:** [Simulation & CAE Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/simulation-cae) **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 35 ## About OpenFOAM OpenFOAM is an open-source software used for computational fluid dynamics (or CFD). ## OpenFOAM Reviews ### 1. best experience free **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Giovanni D. | CAE Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 24, 2024 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** it si very customizable and free. The user guide is pretty complete **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** very difficult to learn. during the first months of use the road is very steep **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** problem related to cfd in general. with particular interest in internal combustion ice ### 2. Computational Fluid Dynamics on OpenFOAM **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** moinuddeen s. | Senior Data Analyst, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 21, 2022 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** OpenFOAM is a free software that can run fluid dynamic simulations with features on par with Ansys and is compatible with stl files created on blender or other 3D object generating softwares **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** OpenFOAM doesnt have a UI like Ansys or other competitors have, and its doesnt have a very intuitive documentation, so for a person new to fluid dynamics, its difficult to understand various settings/options available and would require understanding of many principles of fluid dynamics **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** We used OpenFOAM for simulating the environment insite a bioreactor but design the the 3D model of the bioreactor in blender and running stirring motion of newtonian fluids inside it to calculate pressure, distribution of contents and dead zones ### 3. A free open-source CFD software with wide variety of applications **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ayushi P. | Project Intern, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 12, 2022 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** OpenFOAM can be used for heat transfer problems, and fluid dynamics. It also has mesh generation utilities and can be used for complex multiphase problems as well. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** OpenFOAM software does not have a GUI. It is completely based on C++ and thus requires some coding knowledge. There's a steep learning curve while starting with OpenFOAM. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** OpenFOAM helped me solve fluid flow problems and calculating the power loss because of viscous drag. It also helped solve multiphase problems and those with rotating frame. ### 4. Best opensource CFD software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Madhan Kumar P. | Post-Doctoral Fellow, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 13, 2022 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** Fully opensource and freedom to modify the source code. It also has good documentation and user base. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** The inbulit snappyhexmesh still lacks the capability to create meshes with proper inflation layers. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used it to study the performance of wave energy harvesting turbine. ### 5. Why OpenFoam **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 27, 2022 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** OpenFOAM is open-source and free. It works for both Linux and Windows OS. The codes in Openfoam are written in C++ and the entire OpenFOAM can be automated using python. The visualizer Paraview that comes with OpenFOAM is handy for visualization. The software Paraview can also be interpreted by coding in python using Paraview libraries. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** The coding of OpenFOAM is quite challenging to understand. Only a few communities of people work with OpenFOAM since there is a lack of resources for teaching OpenFOAM. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** Real-life production-related problems, mainly simulation of 3D models in the healthcare domain. By working with OpenFOAM, our fundamentals will be strong. ### 6. Definitely worth the effort **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 10, 2022 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** Implementing new features that interest you and benefiting from the existing architecture, which includes everything from efficient parallelism to moving mesh and topology changes, along with a large number of pre-implemented models and solvers, will make your work much more fun. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** If you wouldn't particularly care about using Linux, managing code organization and reading C++ can be a problem, but most people find it relatively easy. **Recommendations to others considering OpenFOAM:** OpenFOAM is nice for code developers due to the architecture it allows. The procedural is good for code programmers (or scientists) **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** OpenFOAM has a strong pedigree in simulating large eddies, multiphase flow, burning and spraying, free surface flows, etc., all of which work massively in parallel and work very well. ### 7. OpenFOAM Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 21, 2021 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** 1. The flexibity to modify the code as per my problem makes it the best CFD solver for me 2. While other solvers serve as a blackbox wherein the users don't know what computations are going in the background, OpenFOAM allows you to view the entire code to have a gist of what goes into the making of a solver 3. Creating and meshing any geometry becomes so much meaniful and interesting once you know the concept behind it **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** The only thing that is missing in OpenFOAM is the graphical user interface while the computations are ongoing. This makes it very difficult to monitor the desired parameters during runtime **Recommendations to others considering OpenFOAM:** Best software to start with CFD. Make sure to go through the user guide which will solve most of the problems you'll encounter **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have solved a lot of Computational Fluid Dynamics problem using OpenFOAM in fields ranging from aerodynamics to heat transfer. I have got some highly interesting results which I have also presented at a conference. It is because of OpenFOAM that I have got to understand the undelying concepts of Computational Fluid Dynamics ### 8. The Best Open Source CFD Toolkit **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nandula Sai Ujjwal k. | Aerospace Engineeer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2021 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** OpenFoam for me gave me an amazing opportunity to learn CFD from the ground up in the sense of building solvers. I have become a daily user due to this. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** Nothing much to dislike. A kind suggestion would be to include more compressible flow solvers integrated with combustion related solvers. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have been using OpenFOAM to solve incompressible flow problems. I am working towards building my own solvers for compressible flow related problems and develop them. ### 9. A flexible, customizable CFD library for multiphysics CFD Problems **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2021 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** Open-sourced, the backend code can be modified and recompiled to solve new physics **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** The initial learning curve is difficult and industry adoption is difficult due to absence of GUI **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** Computing arc heated high enthalpy flows with inhouse customized solvers ### 10. A free powerful CFD tool that suits research activities and not only **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alessandro P. | R&D Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 28, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** It's free,opensource, with advanced settings **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** GUI is missing and it requires a skilled user **Recommendations to others considering OpenFOAM:** Prepare "templates" for the simulation that you are going to run. This way, only the firts time it will take time to set a simulation. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used openFOAM to solve external aerodynamics and multiphase flow. The main benefit is that the settings are advanced, so that you can have a deep control of the numerics. Moreover, you can integrate by coding several features, including on time visualization of residuals and parameters control. When I used openFOAM for my master thesis project, I improved a lot my knowledge in the field of CFD. In general, commercial software are mostly used as black boxes. With openFOAM you have a higher degree of freedom that, on the other hand, requires a good knowledge of how a CFD code solves the Navier-Stokes equations. OpenFOAM, compared to a commercial software, requires more human work-time. Therefore, when used in a company, a tradeoff between the cost of a specialized worked vs the cost of buying licenses must be considered. If you are skilled in computer programming, you can integrate openFOAM with other tools to perform multi-physics simulation or to develop your improvemente to existing numerical models, as for example, turbulence models and more. The drawback of OpenFOAM is the difficulty in using it. A user must be very skilled compared to when using a commercial software. The absence of the GUI needs you to setup everything by txt files, which might be initially hard, but, on the other hand, offers very good auotmation opportunities. What I found really hard is to have a good opensource mesher. ### 11. Need more learning sources **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nagu s. | Computational Fluid Dynamics Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** The first and best thing I love about Foaming is the open source capabilities. The ease of flexibility of mesh importing, lightweight nature, speed of computing, and ease of convergence. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** Lack of proper Learning sources: During my work, I had to solve a CHT (Conjugate Heat Transfer) problem. For that, I suggested openFOAM to my employer, and I tried and browsed a lot to define the boundary conditions, but I did not find the best source related to it, and I got confused. In the end, we used openFOAM only for visualizing the fluid flow, and for CHT, we moved to commercial software. After a few days, I left that job. Difficult for starting stage: I am aware that, unlike commercial software, openFOAM has less GUI, but in my starting days, I invested (worthwhile) time to learn. Job market: I am from India, and I have not found a single job opening or requirement for the openFOAM tool. I am not aware of the situation outside of India. **Recommendations to others considering OpenFOAM:** First, acquire the theoretical knowledge and intuition of the problem you are solving, and then try Foaming. Go through some tutorials available on the internet, then try if you are a beginner. Open foam flavor is lightweight and easy to solve only if you have proper tutorials or guidance. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am looking forward to solving CHT (If any links, please share). I have solved a few fluid flow problems for flow visualization (cold storage, pipe flow, etc.). I am looking to get a job using the OpenFOAM tool. ### 12. A software with multiple uses, but less user friendly **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gokulnath J. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** OpenFOAM has a lot of uses. Literally, anything can be done via OpenFOAM. Every variable in a flow system can be manipulated resulting in results as precise to the real cases as possible. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** OpenFOAM, because of its humongous similarity to the real world physics, has lots of variables. Each variable is stored in different text files in a particular format. If new variables are to be introduced to a preexisting sample file, the format in which they have to be introduced can be quite challenging. Remembering the format for each text file will also be difficult. **Recommendations to others considering OpenFOAM:** A very useful tool that doesn't have good enough user friendliness, but over all very useful. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I learnt OpenFOAM as a part of my college curriculum in which I had to model different turbulence models. OpenFOAM is a free to use software that can give precise results compared to other softwares but does not have a user interface making it less user friendly. ### 13. QUITE A RIDE WITH OPENFORM **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lan D. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 20, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** OpenFORM is like a tool that you can control and customize for your own good. If you are into building your own gear, OpenFORM is the choice for your CFD simulation. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** I don't have a specific dislike for openform, except that since less people are using it, sometimes it's hard to find more information and ideas when you got stuck. **Recommendations to others considering OpenFOAM:** Give it a try if you are good at cfd and want to do some creation. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I was doing a airfoil simulation at that time. I just started to use Linux. OpenFORM learning helped me understand cfd more as well as shell programming. ### 14. Usability and ease of Understanding OpenFOAM **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mohammed H. | Professional Doctorate in Engineering, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 22, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** I like the Structure of the Output files and the case files it self. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** I do not like the fact that OpenFOAM has no a text to highlight it 's key words with different color. **Recommendations to others considering OpenFOAM:** It is very powerfull software I see a wide range of usability of this piece of art in the future . **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** solving Laminar, turbulent , particles and combustion . ### 15. OpenFoam is a great tool for scientific research **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mohamed Mohsen A. | Graduate Research Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 14, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** I have been using openfoam for many years. It is great that I can easily develop and test new solvers and physical models. The parallel capability is also great for running research level problems that may need large resources. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** I do not like that some or even many of the models or routines in the code are not described and I have to go and check or follow each class and objects to see how this particular model or routine works **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used openfoam for hypersonic flow simulations and fire modeling. The finite volume functions and classes made it super easy to implement new solvers. ### 16. OpenFoam for University Project **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Khizar M. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 16, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** It is easy to use and learn. One can get accurate and reliable results form OpenFOAM than many other softwares available. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** I found it very difficult to install OpenFOAM software and sometimes It just got crash or slowed my laptop. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used OpenFOAM to slove CFD related problems and I found it very useful as its results were more accraute. ### 17. A very useful platform for code implemetation while benefiting fromthe existing routines. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jelena A. | Researcher, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 15, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** the object-oriented structure of the code; the routines for particle tracking and interpolation **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** there were a few bugs that probably got fixed in later versions. **Recommendations to others considering OpenFOAM:** useful for implementing your own piece of code in such a way that you can benefit from the existing routines. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** Lagrangian particle tracking. benefits from using flow solver and interpolation routines. ### 18. It's best software to show any final design in 3D. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sagar C. | Computer Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 15, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** The number of frame and rate at the time of saving file ask and show the warning if is there have in setting. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** Time require to animation is very large I.e. it is time consuming while creating animation files. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** For showing video without buffering, I was increase the frame rate. ### 19. Excellent Environment for simulations **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Waleed k. | Research Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 04, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** Automatic Meshing. Snappy Hex Mesh BlockMesh **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** Postprocessing I didn't like paraview because it is difficult to compute Q Certion in paraview **Recommendations to others considering OpenFOAM:** Excellent software for Modelling and Simut **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** Design and Optimization of Ship Hull to reduce it's trim angle ### 20. Flexibility is the advantage **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** It a good platform to the users to build and solve their own governing equations based on a specific problem. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** While handling libraries the command mode provides a great flexibility to users. Also for beginners those who are not very familiar with c++ library they will face quite difficulty at the beginning. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** Mostly i work with supersonic problem specifically shock/shock interactions or shock/boundary layer interactions. Computing speed is high than the commercial solver with a same system configurations. ### 21. Using OpenFOAM for all type of research **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** Implementation of all type of code using schemes and solvers which can be easily implemented in OpenFOAM **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** Compiling speed is low that causes high Running time **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** Solving 2 phase fluids with cavitation around subjects ### 22. OpenFoam has Object **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Oil & Energy | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** OpenFoam has Object-Oriented approach-One can easily copy existing solver and tweak/change or modify if he has programming background **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** Knowledge of Programming is must and little bit time consuming than other packages **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** Related to oil and gas industry ### 23. It very easy to get info and feedback **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 15, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** Secure and easy to use and it is user friendly **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** Its should have only options to pick up not sentences **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** Getting feedback related to the product ### 24. Review OF **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Renewables & Environment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 18, 2020 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** open source tool, easy to transfer and apply. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** Hard to decipher errors, especially syntax errors **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** heat transfer, particle dispersion, natural ventilation ### 25. OpenFoam is a great free CFD platform for beginners and experts alike. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 08, 2019 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** I love that OpenFoam is free to use and can be interfaced with other software currently in use in my profession. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** The user interface could be more clean. It is sort of utilitarian and lacks aesthetics. **Recommendations to others considering OpenFOAM:** OpenFoam is a great free alternative to some of the expensive CFD softwares available today. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** Fluid dynamics/ flow calculations for air movement and control products. ### 26. Open-Foam capabilities , workflow and user experience **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pavan K. | Graduate Student in Mechanical Engineering , Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 28, 2018 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** It has Flexibility of editing any solvers and creating a customized one. This flexibility is a great enabler to simulate any kind of physics. - IT has solvers for all kinds of physics. - Since it is an opensource developers/people from all around the world contribute to it. - Most of the universities develop new capabilities using OpenFoam and this makes it have State of the art numerics. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** There is no user interface. Everything is based on the command line. Steep learning curve. And fewer resources available online for help. **Recommendations to others considering OpenFOAM:** I would definitely recommend this for Students who are interested in CFD and willing to develop something in the feature. Since it is Opensource it can be used in industry but one needs to be an expert to meet the deadlines. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I worked on multiphase flow problems which required solver manipulating for simulating certain kind of physics. I realized a great flexibility of doing this with this tool. I couldn't have thought of doing this with any other tool in the industry. ### 27. A free computational tool **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Design | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 14, 2018 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** Its an opensource software which allows an individual to conduct tesearch without the need to strive for capital **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** It is not at all user friendly and requires prooer training hours to be learnt. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** Computational flyid dynamucs for designing a supersonic wind tunnel ### 28. Great software **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 13, 2018 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** It's ease of use along with the customer support. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** A little slow at times of heavy traffic **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** Being on the same page with my coworkers ### 29. Openfoam is free, opensource and best at what it does **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew H. | Product Designer, Automotive, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 02, 2017 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** It is opensource, platform independent, free. It has huge array of solvers and being opensource one can implement their own variety on the base kernel. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** It is a numerical solver and post processing solution. But it lacks the visual IDE. Paraview a separate program has to be used in conjunction. **Recommendations to others considering OpenFOAM:** The interface has to be developed. I understand being opensource makes it difficult. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use snappy hex mesh for the mesh generation. This being simple element generates quicker meshes for my 3D models. ### 30. Openfoam is opensource and I like the community **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mark R. | CAE Engineer, Automotive, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 03, 2017 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** I do CFD analysis on a 3D models of vehicle assembly. It being publicly released certainly enables clients to change, update, re-reason the product according to their necessities. Every one of the capacities of premium CAE industry programming is given . This is chiefly well known in research and industry clients. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** There isn't sufficient development as the other market pioneers bring their power into advancement of existing highlights. So in that front openfoam needs to enhance client base of use. **Recommendations to others considering OpenFOAM:** It is free and opensource, simply download and attempt to see it yourself. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I utilized openfoam for representation of components utilized generally in CFD, for example, geometry surfaces, cutting planes, vector plots and streamlines. Movements can be produced helpfully. ### 31. Openfoam being opensource is a boon for other CAE softwares **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 02, 2017 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** I use OpenFOAM mainly for CFD analysis. It being open sourced definitely allows users to change, upgrade, re-purpose the software as per their needs. All the capabilities of premium CAE industry softwares is provided . This is mainly popular in research and industry users. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** Being opensource , there isn't enough development as the other market leaders bring their force into betterment of existing features. So in that front openfoam needs to improve on user usability. **Recommendations to others considering OpenFOAM:** Since it is free, please use it, explore how it works and then choose. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used openfoam for visualization of elements used commonly in CFD such as geometry surfaces, cutting planes, vector plots & streamlines. Animations can be generated conveniently. ### 32. Simulating the CFD analysis for the exhaust in Manifold **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ajith K. | CAE Engineer, Automotive, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 18, 2017 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** It has huge range of solvers and complex problems can be solved in a matter of minutes. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** The interface isn't good at all. I understand that it is open source and free. the premiere companies should come forward and lend there hand in the development **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used OpenFOAM for Simulating the CFD analysis for the exhaust in Manifold. It is a great solver and the open community around it helps the users a lot. ### 33. Opensource and free **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Suresh B. | CAE Engineer, Automotive, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 15, 2017 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** Being free allows users to take advance of the open community and make use contribution. They get access to the library which are other wise closed in proprietary software. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** I understand there are no dedicated developers for User interface enhancement. But also there are a lot of bugs which I have encountered and would like to see them fixed in coming releases. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have done CFD analysis in Fuel line of the engine. ### 34. OpenFOAM is opensource **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andy S. | CAE Engineer, Oil & Energy, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 14, 2017 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** I like it being open source and it implies clients are at freedom to incorporate their own particular adjustments for the product and have the privilege to distribute their mods to the group. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** I don't care for that it is obsolete in solvers when contrasted with restrictive arrangements accessible in the Market. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I utilized it in CFD examination in the wind stream designs around aluminum structures. ### 35. OpenFOAM is free **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aravind S. | CAE Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 13, 2017 **What do you like best about OpenFOAM?** I like it being open source and it means users are at liberty to include their own modifications for the software and have the right to publish their mods to the community. **What do you dislike about OpenFOAM?** I don't like that it is outdated in solvers when compared to proprietary solutions available in the Market. **What problems is OpenFOAM solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used it in CFD analysis in the air flow patterns around aluminum structures. ## OpenFOAM Discussions - [Is OpenFOAM free?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-openfoam-free) - 1 comment - [What do you use as mesher? Are there free ones that are good for complex geometries?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/30233-what-do-you-use-as-mesher-are-there-free-ones-that-are-good-for-complex-geometries) - 1 comment - [View OpenFOAM pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/openfoam/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-03+06%3A45%3A55+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=9936311c-3bf6-4659-82c4-0d72d6ffaf64&secure%5Btoken%5D=9f387861e957366388a29fd75f3bb6792ec692010c5378ef5db12083ed0a3a22&format=llm_user) ## OpenFOAM Features **Design** - 3D/solid modeling Tools - Drawing Tools - Editing Tools - Rendering tools **Tools** - Fluid analysis - Finite element analysis - Multibody dynamics **Work** - Discrete event modeling - Continuous event modeling - Mechanical event simulation - Manufacturing process simulation - Integrate **Environment** - Hardware support - Task - Manage Multiple Profiles - Command Clarity ## Top OpenFOAM Alternatives - [MATLAB](https://www.g2.com/products/matlab/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (749 reviews) - [SimScale](https://www.g2.com/products/simscale/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (274 reviews) - [Ansys Fluent](https://www.g2.com/products/ansys-fluent/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (117 reviews)