Foam Dictionary Editor: A GUI-based open-source tool for OpenFOAM case configuration
Shinji Nakagawa · SoftwareX · 2026
OpenFOAM is a widely used open-source CFD framework in which case configuration is distributed over many dictionary files in system/, constant/, and field-specific directories. While experienced users handle these files efficiently via scripts and command-line tools, the resulting workflow can be difficult to get an overview of and error-prone, especially for non-expert users and for cases involving many regions and fields. This article presents Foam Dictionary Editor (FoDE), an open-source PySide6-based GUI editor for OpenFOAM dictionary files. The tool parses dictionaries into a tree of Python objects and exposes them through a Qt model–view layer, providing a structured tree view, a schema-aware detail panel, and a spreadsheet-like boundary view that aggregates boundary conditions across fields and patches. These views are kept synchronized with a plain-text editor, and an embedded terminal and case-management functions (including case duplication and a case library) allow users to set up and run cases within a single application. Illustrative examples demonstrate that Foam Dictionary Editor improves the overview and editability of cases with many dictionaries, such as multi-region simulations, and reduces the need to switch between a file manager, a text editor, and a terminal. The tool has also been used in university courses to help users understand case structure and reduce configuration mistakes, though its design targets a broad range of OpenFOAM workflows beyond teaching use. The architecture and schema system are designed to be extensible so that additional OpenFOAM versions, solvers, and user-defined dictionaries can be supported incrementally.