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SfePy (Simple finite elements in Python)
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A finite element analysis software based primarily on NumPy and SciPy.

See the INSTALL file for installation instructions.

How to start
------------
SfePy uses so called "problem definition files" (also referred to as
"input files" or "problem description files"") that describe the partial
differential equations (PDEs), boundary conditions, function spaces and
other ingredients of the finite element (FE) formulation of a
PDE-related problem, see [1]. The PDEs are given in weak formulation as
usual in the FE context, see [2].

In order to solve a problem, an input file has to be created. There is a
limited interactive solution support, too, using the isfepy shell, but
this requires an existing input file too.

To see which terms are available for the weak form of the PDEs, consult
'doc/sfepy_manual.pdf'.

When starting a new problem, it is best to have a look at example
problem definition files in the 'input/' directory - copy the one that
is similar to the problem at hand, and modify it. Two of the example
inputs are commented: 'input/poisson.py' and 'input/linear_elastic.py'.

While a problem definition file describes a mathematical problem, it
does not contain a discretized solution domain (a FE mesh). The FE mesh must be
provided in another file in one of the supported formats, notably the
legacy VTK format [3]. SfePy does not provide meshing tools, but it can
use a number of standard formats. The results are almost exclusively
stored in legacy VTK files. Many standard open-source tools can be used
to display such files, namely paraview [4], or mayavi [5]. The latter is
supported directly within SfePy, either via the postproc.py script or
the isfepy shell.

Once an input file and a corresponding mesh file are prepared, the
solution of the problem can be attempted by the 'simple.py' script, see
Examples section in the INSTALL file.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/sfepy/wiki/ProblemDescription
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_formulation
[3] http://www.vtk.org/pdf/file-formats.pdf
[4] http://paraview.org/
[5] http://code.enthought.com/projects/mayavi/

See also
--------
 - 'http://sfepy.org' ... SfePy development (releases, mailing lists,
                          issue tracking, mercurial repository, documentation,
                          examples
 - 'http://sfepy.kme.zcu.cz' ... projects solved within SfePy.

License: New BSD License, see the LICENSE file.

--
Robert Cimrman
