Mesh module

Description

This part of the library has the role to store and manage the meshes, i.e. a collection of elements (real elements) connected to each other by some of their faces. For that, it develops concepts of elements, elements of reference, structure of meshes, collection of nodes, geometric transformations, subpart of the boundary or subzone of the mesh.

There is no really effective meshing capabilities available for the moment in GetFEM. The meshes of complex objects must be imported from existing meshers such as Gmsh or GiD. Some importing functions of meshes have been written and can be easily extended for other formats.

The object which represents a mesh declared in the file getfem_mesh.h and which is used as a basis for handling of the meshes in GetFEM manages also the possibility for the structures depending on a mesh (see MESHFEM and MESHIM modules) to react to the evolution of the mesh (addition or removal of elements, etc.).

Files

File(s)	Description
bgeot_convex_structure.h and bgeot_convex_structure.cc	Describes the structure of an element disregarding the coordinates of its vertices.
bgeot_mesh_structure.h and bgeot_mesh_structure.cc	Describes the structure of a mesh disregarding the coordinates of the nodes.
bgeot_node_tab.h and bgeot_node_tab.cc	A node container allowing the fast search of a node and store nodes identifying the too much close nodes.
bgeot_convex.h	Describes an element with its vertices.
bgeot_convex_ref.h and bgeot_convex_ref.cc and bgeot_convex_structure.cc	Describe reference elements.
bgeot_mesh.h	Describes a mesh with the collection of node (but without the description of geometric transformations).
getfem_mesh_region.h and getfem_mesh_region.cc	Object representing a mesh region (boundary or part of a mesh).
bgeot_geometric_trans.h and bgeot_geometric_trans.cc	Describes geometric transformations.
bgeot_geotrans_inv.h and bgeot_geotrans_inv.cc	A tool to invert geometric transformations.
getfem_mesh.h and getfem_mesh.cc	Fully describes a mesh (with the geometric transformations, subparts of the mesh, support for parallelization). Includes the Bank algorithm to refine a mesh.
getfem_deformable_mesh.h	defines an object capable to deform a mesh with respect to a displacement field and capable to restore it
getfem_mesher.h and getfem_mesher.cc	An experimental mesher, in arbitrary dimension. To be used with care and quite slow (because of node optimization). It meshes geometries defined by some level sets.
getfem_import.h and getfem_import.cc	Import mesh files in various formats
getfem_regular_meshes.h and getfem_regular_meshes.cc	Produces structured meshes
getfem_mesh_slicers.h and getfem_mesh_slicers.cc	A slice is built from a mesh, by applying some slicing operations (cut the mesh with a plane, intersect with a sphere, take the boundary faces, etc..). They are used for post-treatment (exportation of results to VTK or OpenDX, etc.).
getfem_mesh_slice.h and getfem_mesh_slice.cc	Store mesh slices.

State

Stable and not evolving so much.

Perspectives

For the moment, the module is split into two parts which lie into two different namespaces. Of course, It would be more coherent to gather the module in only one namespace (getfem).

Note

The file bgeot_mesh.h could be renamed getfem_basic_mesh.h.

A bibliographical review on how to efficiently store a mesh and implement the main operations (add a node, an element, deal with faces, find the neighbour elements, the isolated faces …) would be interesting to make the mesh structure evolve.

A senstive algorithm is the one (in bgeot_node_tab.cc) which identify the too much close nodes. More investigations (and documentation) are probably necessary.