Documentation about converting mesh files

[Miha Marolt]

I originally posted this bug (?) as a question (https://answers.launchpad.net/dolfin/+question/193056) , but since there was no feedback, I'm reposting this again here.

##########################################################
Hi!

Yesterday I used Dolfin for the first time and I find interface and documentation very nice. With one exception.. it took me quite a long time to figure out how to use a mesh generated by a third party program.

There are no instructions for converting between different mesh formats in the relevant part of the tutorial [2]. I also searched the pdf version of the tutorial [1] for word "convert" and I didn't find any occurences of it in the context of meshes.

Some information I would find handy:

 * Fenics uses its own mesh format that is saved as a xml file.
 * To convert from other mesh formats you can use "dolfin-convert" script. In Ubuntu it is distributed separately from the C++ and Python libraries in package "dolfin-bin".
 * One can also convert between mesh formats with library functions. In Python for example: "from dolfin_utils import meshconvert; meshconvert.convert2xml(.....)".
 * For more information see [3], for example page 183, 203,...

In addition to that maybe "python-bin" package could be suggested by the "python-dolfin".

Do you agree with the remarks or have I missed something?

[1] http://fenicsproject.org/_static/tutorial/fenics_tutorial_1.0.pdf
[2] http://fenicsproject.org/documentation/tutorial/prepro.html
[3] http://launchpad.net/fenics-book/trunk/final/+download/fenics-book-2011-10-27-final.pdf
#############################################################

[Anders Logg (logg)]

Did you look at the FEniCS book? It has some documentation on
dolfin-convert in Chapter 10 (the DOLFIN chapter).

--
Anders

On Wed, May 09, 2012 at 09:37:38PM -0000, Miha Marolt wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> I originally posted this bug (?) as a question
> (https://answers.launchpad.net/dolfin/+question/193056) , but since
> there was no feedback, I'm reposting this again here.
>
> ##########################################################
> Hi!
>
> Yesterday I used Dolfin for the first time and I find interface and
> documentation very nice. With one exception.. it took me quite a long
> time to figure out how to use a mesh generated by a third party program.
>
> There are no instructions for converting between different mesh formats
> in the relevant part of the tutorial [2]. I also searched the pdf
> version of the tutorial [1] for word "convert" and I didn't find any
> occurences of it in the context of meshes.
>
> Some information I would find handy:
>
> * Fenics uses its own mesh format that is saved as a xml file.
> * To convert from other mesh formats you can use "dolfin-convert" script. In Ubuntu it is distributed separately from the C++ and Python libraries in package "dolfin-bin".
> * One can also convert between mesh formats with library functions. In Python for example: "from dolfin_utils import meshconvert; meshconvert.convert2xml(.....)".
> * For more information see [3], for example page 183, 203,...
>
> In addition to that maybe "python-bin" package could be suggested by the
> "python-dolfin".
>
> Do you agree with the remarks or have I missed something?
>
> [1] http://fenicsproject.org/_static/tutorial/fenics_tutorial_1.0.pdf
> [2] http://fenicsproject.org/documentation/tutorial/prepro.html
> [3] http://launchpad.net/fenics-book/trunk/final/+download/fenics-book-2011-10-27-final.pdf
> #############################################################
>
> ** Affects: dolfin
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>

[Miha Marolt (tloramus)]

There is information in the FEniCS book (as I pointed out in the previous post), but I feel that

 * converting between different mesh formats is one of the first things a new user of FEniCS libraries needs to do, so he should be able to get basic information about it in the relevant part of the tutorial [1] or in the Fundamentals section [2].

 * in the book it is (too) difficult to find instructions for converting between different formats, because the book has 700+ pages, the table of contents has no entry mentioning mesh formats and the chapter 10.3.2 that deals with meshes is quite thorough and developer oriented (too thorough for someone who wants just quick instructions on how to convert his gmsh mesh to fenics mesh).

I think that just a couple of extra lines in the tutorial (see my previous post) would save me (and other newbies) a lot of time.

[1] http://fenicsproject.org/documentation/tutorial/prepro.html
[2] http://fenicsproject.org/documentation/tutorial/fundamentals.html