Software Alternatives & Reviews

Paraview VS OpenFOAM

Compare Paraview VS OpenFOAM and see what are their differences

Paraview logo Paraview

ParaView is an open-source, multi-platform application designed to visualize data sets of size...

OpenFOAM logo OpenFOAM

OpenFOAM® - Official home of The Open Source Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Toolbox.
  • Paraview Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-29
  • OpenFOAM Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-08-02

Paraview videos

Paraview Tips'n Tricks - The art of mesh quality visualization | Tech Queen Roxy

More videos:

  • Review - Introduction to ParaView Postprocessing of NACS Results
  • Review - ParaView | Basics of Data Visualization | Best Practice | Part 01

OpenFOAM videos

What is OpenFoam? | Skill-Lync

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How to run your first simulation in OpenFOAM® - Part 1 - tutorial
  • Tutorial - CFD tutorial for beginners | What is OpenFOAM? | SKILL-LYNC

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Paraview and OpenFOAM)
Simulation Software
45 45%
55% 55
Technical Computing
16 16%
84% 84
Numerical Computation
17 17%
83% 83
CFD
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Paraview and OpenFOAM. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, OpenFOAM seems to be a lot more popular than Paraview. While we know about 19 links to OpenFOAM, we've tracked only 1 mention of Paraview. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Paraview mentions (1)

  • Just installed openfoam2012, previously I used openfoam8. But it did not install paraview,i think.
    Openfoam installation does not come with Paraview. Directly download paraview binaries from paraview.org and use it. Donot try to compile yourself , if you are not familiar with Linux. Source: about 3 years ago

OpenFOAM mentions (19)

  • OpenFOAM on Debian 12
    In openfoam.org, there is not compiled binaries for Debian (any version). So one should install it using docker (I prefer to do not use it) or by compiling the code from the source. I consider compiling from source, but I do prefer binaries. Source: 10 months ago
  • Please help me get running OpenFOAM
    Hello I am a mechanical engineering student in my last year. So I made the wisest decision to learn OpenFOAM. But there is the catch. I have no idea how to use Linux or how to emulate Linux on Windows 10. I found a lot of videos on Youtube how to download an start OpenFOAM but every one of them was using different methods each time so I got confused. Can anyone please help or direct me? Thank you for your answers... Source: about 1 year ago
  • Step by Step (Written not Video) Tutorial for FEM with Air
    As far as air flow simulation, I got slightly farther with Open Foam than I did in FreeCAD directly. Still, I got in way over my skill level and stopped before getting anything useful. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Open source FEA tools instead of ANSYS Workbench and APDL
    There are two versions of openfoam, one closed source (which is the one I linked to in my original comment, my apologies about that) and the open source version. But what you're describing makes it sound like fenics might be your best option. Source: over 1 year ago
  • command not found and looping
    I suggest you install per the instructions at openfoam.com or openfoam.org instead of using apt. Source: over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Paraview and OpenFOAM, you can also consider the following products

ANSYS Fluent - ANSYS engineering simulation and 3D design software delivers product modeling solutions with unmatched scalability and a comprehensive multiphysics foundation.

Simscale CFD - SimScale CFD is a cloud-based leading CAE platform that offers access to CFD, FEA, and thermodynamics simulation capabilities 100% via a standard web browser.

MATLAB - A high-level language and interactive environment for numerical computation, visualization, and programming

Autodesk Fluid Flow - Autodesk Fluid Flow is an industry-leading fluid dynamics software that helps to enhance product performance and reliability.

Wolfram Mathematica - Mathematica has characterized the cutting edge in specialized processing—and gave the chief calculation environment to a large number of pioneers, instructors, understudies, and others around the globe.

CFDTool - An Easy to Use MATLAB Computational Fluid Dynamics CFD Simulation GUI Toolbox