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I am looking to implement GMSh into a simualtor that I am going to create. I am looking to integrate the geo, mesh, and post processor modules.

However, looking online, it appears the documentation for the GMSH function calls are non existent. I was wondering if anyone on the forum has ran into some sort of documentation for the program. I do know that this exists but it is not extensive enough: http://gmsh.info/doc/texinfo/gmsh.pdf. From the PDF, it says that the API documentation is not complete. Does a rough draft of the documentation exist somewhere?

AS a side question, what is the practicality of integrating GMSH in a simulator given its current state? Would it be better for me to look off of other open source programs on how they created a basic CAD and mesh package or are there better open source alternatives that I can use? I did find this site: http://www.robertschneiders.de/meshgeneration/software.html and it appears that GMSH is the better tool compared to the others. The only downfall is that GMSH does not have adequate documentation.

Another option is that I could create my own from scratch; however, I do not have the experience nor the background to do this. Unless, someone would be able to provide some really good source material, I might be able to pull it off.

EDIT:

So after talking to the creators of the program, there is no documentation of the API.

philm
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    I would suggest that you keep the pre and post-processor separate from your "simulator" as people usually like to use there own tools for pre and post-processing. – stali Feb 15 '16 at 16:40
  • Hey stali, could you explain your comment a little bit more? – philm Feb 15 '16 at 16:53
  • Have you also check the html version of the manual? – nicoguaro Feb 15 '16 at 19:59
  • The HTML and the PDF manual (The one that I linked to in the questions) contain the same content. Although, thank you for thought – philm Feb 15 '16 at 20:39
  • I guess, I will have to take this as a no – philm Feb 17 '16 at 14:22
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    You'll have to use @mention to send a notification. See Markdown help:Comment formatting – Steve Feb 18 '16 at 18:06
  • @Steve Oh, Ok, thank you for pointing this out! I had no idea. Still new to the forum a little – philm Feb 18 '16 at 19:07
  • @stali Hey stali, I did reply to your comment but I had no idea I was suppose to add in the @. I think I have an idea of what you are saying but could you explain a little bit more? – philm Feb 18 '16 at 19:08
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    You could take a look at mshr, which is now part of the FEniCS project, but works as a stand-alone tool if you combine it with MeshIO (which is not possible just yet, I think). It's written in CPP but has a Python interface via SWIG. – Christian Clason Feb 19 '16 at 14:50
  • ... I just checked, MeshIO now supports both GMSH and Dolfin XML file formats, so using it instead of GMSH should indeed be possible. – Christian Clason Feb 19 '16 at 14:59
  • @Christian Thank you for the suggestion, I will definitely be looking at that. I think that for now, I will create my own 2-D interface. I have a friend who did something similiar and he said that it wasn't too bad. The mesh generator seems to be mostly documented. But I will keep meshr in mind, thank you – philm Feb 19 '16 at 15:02

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Currently there is a GMSH API in the works:

https://gitlab.onelab.info/gmsh/gmsh/tree/master/api

Also, there are rumors that there will be a fully documented API by version 4.0.

In short, there is no documentation on the functions for GMSH (except for what is in the source all ready). But, they are planning on creating a documented version by GMSH 4.0.

http://onelab.info/pipermail/gmsh/2017/011767.html

philm
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