Proposal for GSoC: Elmer-Integration

[m42kus]

Just read the comments you left in google docs bernd, which clearified things but also raised a few more questions. Want to look at the code a little more tomorrow before I ask them though.

Thanks for the feedback

[m42kus]

What I have been missing in phase2 is the FEM-Mesh. This needs to be transfered to Elmer too, in order to make a analysis.

Your right, missed that during my analysis of the FEM code, thanks for pointing it out. Will have a quick look at the source and adapt the proposal.

I think I misunderstood that slightly at first. Did you mean that I missed to include the mesh export step necessary in order to create the case directory in which ElmerSolver is executed? I included that now in the timeline.
Edit: Ups, just realized that I already included that in Phase 1. I'm not sure why the FEM-Mesh must be adapted?

Now to the more interesting stuff: post-processing. The idea I tried to convey in my proposal is to implement a Result-Object which holds the post-processing data directly in a native vtk-object like vtkUnstructuredGrid. This result object could than be "opened" in Paraview or used by the pipeline of the FEM workbench. This would be a more flexible approach and requires way less code to be written. Of course post-processing would than only be possible via the vtk pipeline (or paraview)...

It would be cool to include the CalculiX cantilever beam as the first analysis to make with Elmer from within FreeCAD. Means: load the 3D FEM example from Start workbench --> add an ElmerSolver object --> select the ElmerSolver object --> run the analysis (can be tested with Z88 solver at the moment) --> an result object should be created.

I can imagine it is outside the scope of this project. What i think it would be nice if a analysis is done with multiple solvers to compare them (and post on wiki).

I have to use some kind of analysis to test Elmer anyway. To use the already existing example and simply swap/add the solver is the best way to go and also allows to easily compare the solvers (and post the results somewhere ). I'm going to include that into the timeline at the end in Phase 2.