FEM Roundup - Looking at the FreeCAD FEM ecosystem to see what features can be upstreamed

[Kunda1]

This thread is geared toward looking at the current snapshot of FreeCAD FEM related workbenches and Addons and seeing if any features in them are worth upstreaming in to FreeCAD master.

Workbenches
CFDoF
DualSPHysics
FEM_FrontISTR

Addons
fcFEM

Other
Beso topology optimization

[NewJoker]

I think that it would be great to implement the whole CfdOF workbench. It’s already very advanced but it’s up to @oliveroxtoby. The newly developed Dynamics workbench by @josegegas may also be worth adding soon and it deserves at least a place in Add-on Manager. Apart from that, I would consider merging fcFEM created by @HarryvL and beso code for topology optimization developed by @fandaL.

[thschrader]

My 2 cent:
Integrating cfd/FEM-wbs only makes sense when the (new) user can run this stuff
without additional modules, like calculix.

cfdof-wb:
Needs openfoam, installation can be difficult and time consuming, depending on the version.
For instance bluecfd-installer is 830 MB big.
Aditional mesher cfmesh necessary for generating boundary elements.
My vote: no

DualSPysics:
For realistic simulations you need GPU-computing, @kwahoo has done some stuff here:
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 5&start=70
Without powerful Nvidia-Graphics the wb is for playing, not more.
My vote: no

FemFrontISTR:
Advantage: multi-cpu capable. But with the release of FC 0.20.1 ccx now has the same
capability. Solver-files must be located in User\AppData\Roaming\FreeCAD\Mod\FEM_FrontISTR
My vote: I am not sure

fcFEM/Beso:
Yes

Elmer:
Here is @uwestoehrs opinion needed.
My vote: yes, if possible

[Nsikak1]

My 2 cent:
Integrating cfd/FEM-wbs only makes sense when the (new) user can run this stuff
without additional modules, like calculix.

cfdof-wb:
Needs openfoam, installation can be difficult and time consuming, depending on the version.

I pretty sure if someone is interested in cfd enough to load the workbench for use, they would probably need to be smart enough for the required installation..and that could be solve with an integrated script? No?
Just my 5 kobo

[josegegas]

I think that it would be great to implement the whole CfdOF workbench. It’s already very advanced but it’s up to @oliveroxtoby. The newly developed Dynamics workbench by @josegegas may also be worth adding soon and it deserves at least a place in Add-on Manager. Apart from that, I would consider merging fcFEM created by @HarryvL and beso code for topology optimization developed by @fandaL.

Not sure if my Dynamics Workbench is ready yet. It still has some problems to be solved before it is fully functional.The main limitation is that, for any model to simmulate properly, all the nodes must be oriented parrallel to the global reference frame. I am doing my best to solve this...

[josegegas]

I think that it would be great to implement the whole CfdOF workbench. It’s already very advanced but it’s up to @oliveroxtoby. The newly developed Dynamics workbench by @josegegas may also be worth adding soon and it deserves at least a place in Add-on Manager. Apart from that, I would consider merging fcFEM created by @HarryvL and beso code for topology optimization developed by @fandaL.

I do not think my Dynamics workbench is ready yet. I am working on many changes and improvements, and catching bugs...

[HarryvL]

I would consider merging fcFEM created by @HarryvL

Happy to support, but I wouldn’t know where to start.

Also, I am planning to increase fcFEM functionality a lot, so it should not go at the expense of that.

Finally, we need a guru who can get scikit-sparse working on Windows.

[fandaL]

I would consider merging fcFEM created by @HarryvL and beso code for topology optimization developed by @fandaL.

Instead of merging the existing beso code, it would be much better (regarding further development) to rewrite topology optimization and connect it internally with some solver*. Hopefully, I will start with some experiments in this direction.

*read as fcFEM

[Kunda1]

Finally, we need a guru who can get scikit-sparse working on Windows.

Off-topic but checkout https://github.com/scikit-sparse/scikit ... /issues/41