What’s New in GetFEM 4.0

This is a major update to GetFEM. The main changes is the introduction of a new model bricks system. The old system is kept and compatibility with 3.x releases is globally ensured. However some functionalities are deprecated. The main changes are:

Released version, 2009/09/19:

• The mesh_fem object has undergone significant changes. Now it is possible to perform linear combination of degrees of freedom in order to describe some special finite element spaces. The main application is to obtain a finite element space reduced on a boundary or a curve. But it can be used also to prescribe directly some matching condition. The main change in the use of the mesh_fem object is the introduction of “basic” and “reduced” dofs. See the documentation.
• A new algorithm gmm_range_basis allows to select a basis between the columns of a matrix. It has been specially designed to select a basis of the trace on a boundary of a finite element space.
• The partial_mesh_fem object has been completely changed. It is now a lighter object which is intensively used in the new model bricks to obtain finite element spaces on a boundary.
• Introduction of the new model brick system. The bricks are more simple to build and it is now really designed to the representation of coupled/multiphysics models. A generic manner to deals with time dependent models from static models is also introduced.
• Python interface uses Numpy instead of Numarray.

All the old bricks have not been rewritten into new bricks. This will be done gradually in the near future. A Scilab interface is close to be finished and should be included in the future release.