FreeFEM3D (aka ff3d) is a 3d general solver
0) Contents
========
0) Contents
1) Licence issue and Warranty
2) Description
3) Documentation
4) Getting the sources
a) cvs repository
b) tarballs
5) Getting binaries
6) Compiling the code
a) Generalities
b) Mac OS-X
c) MS-Windows
7) More informations
a) Mailing lists
b) contact us
1) License issue and Warranty
==========================
Copyright (C) 2001-2007 Stéphane Del Pino
ff3d is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
2) Description
===========
FreeFEM3D (aka ff3d) is a 3D solver of partial differential
equations (PDE). It is a member of the familly of the freefem
programs (see http://www.freefem.org).
ff3d, as well as its cousins, is a PDE solver driven by a
user-friendly language. It solves many kind of problems such as
elasticity, fluids (Stokes and Navier-Stokes) and a lot more. The
user has to enter the equation associated with the problem, giving
either the PDE in strong formulation or weak (variational)
formulation.
ff3d can use either the Finite Elements method (the mesh of the
geometry being provided by the user) or a Fictitious Domain like
approach where the geometry is described using Constructive Solid
Geometry (CSG). This description is done using the POV-Ray language
but others such as VRML could be added.
The processing of the results is left to the user. One can use
various graphic tools: output in the MEdit mesh format or VTK are
supported. The implementation of a VTK base visualization module is
underway.
The goal of ff3d is to provide a good teaching tool and a research
toolbox (the code is written in C++ and its design is such that new
methods can be easily implemented).
3) Documentation
=============
A user documentation is available at
http://www.freefem.org/docs/freefem3dDoc.pdf
It is written in latex. Solver options are automagically generated
browsing the code.
Documentation examples are given in the 'doc/doc-tests' directory.
Developer documentation does not exist by now, but a doxygen tree is
browsable at
http://www.freefem.org/ff3d/doxygen/
4) Getting the sources
===================
Since ff3d is licensed under GNU GPL (see paragraph 1), it sources are
distributed. FreeFEM3D is a non-GNU project hosted by Savannah
http://savannah.nongnu.org
Sources are archived using a cvs repository.
a) cvs repository
--------------
To download the sources using cvs, one must install cvs (see
http://www.cvshome.org) and ssh.
The following two commands will get the sources for you:
export CVS_RSH=ssh
cvs -z3 -d:ext:anoncvs@subversions.gnu.org:/cvsroot/ff3d co ff3d
To get your source tree up to date, in your ff3d directory, just enter
export CVS_RSH=ssh
cvs update
b) tarballs
--------
People that only need official releases, may find more convinient to
only get tarballs. They are provided at
http://www.freefem.org/ff3d/sources/
5) Getting binaries
================
If one does not want to get into the compiling task, binairies are
available. At the moment they are not automatically generated, so they
may not be up to date. Check them at:
http://www.freefem.org/ff3d/binaries.html
GNU/Linux, Mac-OS X and MS-Windows binaries are available.
6) Compiling the sources
=====================
a) Generalities
------------
Note that g++-4.x is required to compile ff3d!
[ Previous versions (g++-3.x) compilers are no more supported! ]
If you got the sources using cvs, to generate the configure script,
you will also need:
- autoconf (version higher than 2.50)
- automake (version 1.9 recommended)
- libtools
The following packages are required
- g++ (version >= 4)
- bison
The following are optional (but recommended)
- autogen
- vtk (version >= 4)
The compilation procedure is the following.
If you got the sources using *cvs* you have to generate the
'configure' script by yourself. To do so, go to the ff3d directory and
execute
autoreconf -i
This will generate the 'configure' script for you.
=> Note that the configure script is part of the tarball distribution.
One has now to execute it giving options
./configure --help
will list them. Use the '--enable-debug' if you want to develop new
functionalities.
b) Mac OS-X
--------
To build sources, we recommand the usage of fink
http://fink.sourceforge.net/
This will help you in installing the required softwares.
c) MS-Windows
----------
One has to install cygwin to compile ff3d. Get it at
http://cygwin.com/
7) More informations
=================
a) Mailing lists
-------------
Four mailing lists are related to ff3d. They are also hosted by
Savannah. One can subscribe to them at
http://savannah.nongnu.org/mail/?group=ff3d
b) contact us
----------
The best way to contact us, is to write at
ff3d-users@nongnu.org
If you want to ask question non specific to ff3d, one can write email
to
freefem@ann.jussieu.fr
--
Comments are welcome.
Project leader:
- Olivier Pironneau <Olivier.Pironneau@math.jussieu.fr>
Developers:
- Jean-Baptiste Apoung Kamga Del Pino <apoung@ann.jussieu.fr>
- Stéphane Del Pino <Stephane.DelPino@math.jussieu.fr>
- Driss Yakoubi <yakoubi@ann.jussieu.fr>
Contributor:
- Cécile Dobrzynski <dobrzyns@ann.jussieu.fr>
- Pascal Havé <Pascal.Have@math.jussieu.fr>
Debian Packager:
- Christophe Prud'homme <prudhomm@debian.org>