Hi Robert, Ondrej, others.
For some time now I've been planing to learn finite element method
with the purpose of applying it to electrostatic problems arising in
field emission calculations. I'm also fond of free software tools.
I've been thinking of using libmesh, which seems to be rather
powerful, but currently I would say that it is too hardcore for me,
given how weak my knowledge of C++ is; plus I don't yet need advanced
capabilities like parallel computation.
So while reading about sympy, I've stumbled upon sfepy, and I feel
optimistic about it because 1) it looks like a still relatively simple
implementation, and 2) it is wrtten mostly in Python (I've got some
experience with Python, numpy, scipy, matplotlib).
What sfepy is lacking is of course documentation. I've read some
introductory texts on FEM, but certainly don't feel knowledgeable
enough to figure how to use sfepy right away. I wold say I need to
close the gap between pure theory and sfepy implementation. Thus I've
got two questions:
* Do you think that using sfepy to learn FEM in general is a good
idea? (By "using sfepy to learn FEM" I mean 1) learning how to
describe the problem so that sfepy can solve it and 2) learning how
sfepy actually works so that I can actually make modifications myself)
* What book would you recommend as a guide to studying FEM (is there
one that sfepy implementation follows more closely than the others)?
Sorry if my questions look silly -- they certainly do to me :)
Nonetheless, thanks for the great work!
--
Sergey
