Big one this one. Bugs galore no doubt.

Kivy has been dropped as a dependency, and all progress/status windows are now using PySide6, as that was already a dependency required for Matplotlib.

The other big change is that FloVi no longer uses STL geometry to define CFD geometry, but now uses Step files. Yes, Blender can write to step solid geometry with a bit of help from Netgen’s newish OpenCascade libraries. This means that CFD geometry will automatically be removed from the CFD domain even if there is an overlap, and mesh refinements are applied to entire faces rather that just their edges.

As a famous uncle once said however, “With great power, comes great responsibility” and the responsibility here is that Blender geometry must be dealt with very precisely e.g. if there is even the tiniest gap between two geometry objects, or between a geometry object and the edge of the domain, Netgen will try and mesh it and likely fail.

As we are now using a newer version of Netgen, a reinstall of the VI-Suite will be required, but older Blender files should load fine. I have also taken this opportunity to update the OpenFOAM requirement to 12.  The Dicehub OpenFOAM docker image can still be used but you will need to download tag 12, as in the image below.

Docker OpenFOAM 12

I don’t have time for a full tutorial video on the new changes at the moment, but hopefully I will soon. Below is a short video on installing OpenFOAM in Docker Desktop.