.. MeshPy documentation master file, created by sphinx-quickstart on Tue Jul  1 12:35:03 2008.
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Welcome to MeshPy's documentation!
==================================

MeshPy offers quality triangular and tetrahedral mesh generation for Python.
Meshes of this type are chiefly used in finite-element simulation codes, but
also have many other applications ranging from computer graphics to robotics.


In order to generate these 2D and 3D meshes, MeshPy provides Python interfaces
to two well-regarded mesh generators, `Triangle
<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~quake/triangle.html>`_ by J. Shewchuk and `TetGen
<http://tetgen.berlios.de/>`_ by Hang Si. Both are included in the package in
slightly modified versions.

MeshPy requires `Boost.Python <http://www.boost.org>`_. 

Show me! I need examples!
-------------------------
This simple code generates a mesh of a "brick"::

    from meshpy.tet import MeshInfo, build

    mesh_info = MeshInfo()
    mesh_info.set_points([
        (0,0,0), (2,0,0), (2,2,0), (0,2,0),
        (0,0,12), (2,0,12), (2,2,12), (0,2,12),
        ])
    mesh_info.set_facets([
        [0,1,2,3],
        [4,5,6,7],
        [0,4,5,1],
        [1,5,6,2],
        [2,6,7,3],
        [3,7,4,0],
        ])
    mesh = build(mesh_info)
    print "Mesh Points:"
    for i, p in enumerate(mesh.points):
        print i, p
    print "Point numbers in tetrahedra:"
    for i, t in enumerate(mesh.elements):
        print i, t
    mesh.write_vtk("test.vtk")

As a result of this, you will get::

    Mesh Points:
    0 [0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
    1 [2.0, 0.0, 0.0]
    2 [2.0, 2.0, 0.0]
    3 [0.0, 2.0, 0.0]
    4 [0.0, 0.0, 12.0]
    5 [2.0, 0.0, 12.0]
    6 [2.0, 2.0, 12.0]
    7 [0.0, 2.0, 12.0]
    8 [1.000116, 0.0, 0.0]
    9 [0.0, 0.99960499999999997, 0.0]
    10 [0.0, 0.99934199999999995, 12.0]
    11 [1.0006170000000001, 0.0, 12.0]
    ...
    Point numbers in tetrahedra:
    0 [21, 39, 38, 52]
    1 [9, 50, 2, 3]
    2 [12, 45, 15, 54]
    3 [39, 43, 20, 52]
    4 [41, 45, 24, 54]
    ...

and a file :file:`test.vtk` that you can view with `Paraview <http://paraview.org>`_ or
`Visit <http://www.llnl.gov/VisIt/>`_.

Contents
========

.. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 2

    installation
    reference
    faq

MeshPy has its own `web page <http://mathema.tician.de/software/meshpy>`_, where you
can find updated software, news, a forum, and documentation.

Indices and tables
==================

* :ref:`genindex`
* :ref:`modindex`
* :ref:`search`