Getting Started
zCFD is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver designed to make highly effective use of modern computer architectures. The code will run on unstructured meshes from a variety of sources, and will export data in many common formats.
1Download
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2Install
If you are running Linux/Unix zCFD is provided as a stand-alone installer containing all the packages required to get started.
Linux / Unix
Once the zCFD installer has downloaded run the install script and follow the prompts.
$ bash zCFD-icx-sse-impi-2024.10.9337-Linux-64bit.sh
Then copy the license file provided over email into the lic folder in the install directory
$ cp zcfd.lic /<path to zCFD install>/lic/
Once zCFD has been installed the zCFD environment can be activated:
$ source /path/to/zCFD/bin/activate
(zCFD)$
Windows
zCFD can be run locally on windows machines if Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) is installed. To install WSL2 simply follow the microsoft instructions which can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10. The chosen linux distribution shouldn't have an effect on how the code runs, but Ubuntu has proven particularly robust.
In order to access your Linux filesystem on Windows it can be useful to add a quick access link in file explorer. To do this, in the address in file explorer enter
\\wsl$\which will show you show you the root folders for your installed Linux distributions. Simply navigate to your data desired folder (\\wsl$\Uuntu\users\$USERNAME\ for ubuntu home), right click on the folder and select 'pin to quick access' to pin it to the quick access menu on your file explorer.
From within the WSL2 environment run the install script and follow the prompts.
$ bash zCFD-icx-sse-impi-2024.10.9337-Linux-64bit.sh
Then copy the license file provided over email into the lic folder in the install directory
$ cp zcfd.lic /<path to zCFD install>/lic/
Once zCFD has been installed the zCFD environment can be activated:
$ source /path/to/zCFD/bin/activate
(zCFD)$
3Validate
Run your first validation case.