Running the MinimalFEM Solver

In most applications, the finite element code is run separately, outside of modelbuilder, possibly on a different machine (desktop, network cluster, HPC system, or cloud system). For convenience, we have embedded the MinimalFEM solver into ModelBuilder-2D so that you can run it directly. (Our problem set is sufficiently small that MinimalFEM can run on a standard desktop machine.)

17. Run MinimalFEM

Clear the Output Messages view again by clicking the Clear button. Then go to the CMB2D menu and select the Run Solver option. In response, ModelBuilder-2D will load the minfem.inp file generated in the previous step, execute the MinimalFEM solver, read the native MinimalFEM output, and translate the data into a VTK polydata file that is named minfem.vtp. The code to convert the result to .vtp file format was written by Kitware to make it easy to ingest for visualization. This code was added to a fork of the origin MinimalFEM repository; you can access the MinimalFEM source that includes our additions at Our GitLab repository.

As with meshing, the solver should run in 1-2 seconds, and the only user feedback are info messages that the operation succeeded.