FreeFEM3D (aka ff3d) is a 3d version of FreeFEM.


0) Contents
   ========

0) Contents
1) Licence issue and Warranty
2) Description
3) Documentation
4) Getting the sources
  a) cvs repository
  b) tarballs
5) Getting binaries
6) Compiling the code
  a) Generalities
  b) Mac OS-X
  c) MS-Windows
7) More informations
  a) Mailing lists
  b) contact us



1) License issue and Warranty
   ==========================

  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Stphane Del Pino

  ff3d is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
  (at your option) any later version.

  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
  GNU General Public License for more details.

  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
  Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA

2) Description
   ===========

FreeFEM3D (aka ff3d) is a 3D solver of partial differential equations.
It is a member of the familly of the freefem programs (see
http://www.freefem.org).

ff3d, as well as his cousins, is PDE solver driven by a user-friendly
language. It is in some sense a general solver for vectorial PDEs of
degree two (and a bit more). This makes possible to solve many kind of
problems such as elastcity, fluids (Stokes and Navier-Stokes) and a
lot more. The user only has to enter the equation associated to the
problem, giving either the PDE or the associate variational
formulation.

Since up to now, no free volumic mesher can be found, ff3d does not
use standard Finite Elements but a Fictitious Domain approach. The
geometry is described using CSG. This description is done using
the POV-Ray language but others such as VRML may be added.

The processing of the results is still let to the user. One can use
various graphic tools: OpenDx being the most powerful free software
on the market nowadays. The implementation of a VTK base visualization
module is underway.

The goal of ff3d is to provide a good teaching tool as well as to give
a research toolbox (the code is written in C++ and its design is such
that new methods can be easily implemented).


3) Documentation
   =============

A user documentation is available at
	http://www.freefem.org/docs/freefem3dDoc.pdf
It is written in latex. Solver options are automagically generated
browsing the code.

Documentation examples are given in the 'doc/doc-tests' directory.

Developer documentation does not exist by now, but a doxygen tree is
browsable at
	http://www.freefem.org/ff3d/doxygen/


4) Getting the sources
   ===================

Since ff3d is licensed under GNU GPL (see paragraph 1), it sources are
distributed. FreeFEM3D is a non-GNU project hosted by Savannah
	http://savannah.nongnu.org
Sources are archived using a cvs repository. 

  a) cvs repository
     -------------- 
To download the sources using cvs, one must install cvs (see
http://www.cvshome.org) and ssh.

The following two commands will get the sources for you:
  export CVS_RSH=ssh
  cvs -z3 -d:ext:anoncvs@subversions.gnu.org:/cvsroot/ff3d co ff3d

To get your source tree up to date, in your ff3d directory, just enter
  export CVS_RSH=ssh
  cvs update

  b) tarballs
     --------
People that only need official releases, may find more convinient to
only get tarballs. They are provided at
	http://www.freefem.org/ff3d/sources/

5) Getting binaries
   ================

If one does not want to get into the compiling task, binairies are
available. At the moment they are not automatically generated, so they
may not be up to date. Check them at:
	http://www.freefem.org/ff3d/binaries.html
GNU/Linux, Mac-OS X and MS-Windows binaries are available.


6) Compiling the sources
   =====================

  a) Generalities
     ------------

Note that g++-3.x is required to compile ff3d!
[ Previous versions (g++-2.x) compilers are NOT supported! ]

If you got the sources using cvs, to generate the configure script,
you will also need:
- autoconf (version higher than 2.50)
- automake (version 1.6 recommanded)
- libtools

The following softwares are required
- g++ (version >= 3)
- bison

The following are optional (but recommended)
- autogen
- vtk (version >= 4)

The compilation procedure is the following.

If you got the sources using *cvs* you have to generate the
'configure' script by yourself. To do so, go to the ff3d directory and
execute
	autoreconf -i
This will generate the 'configure' script for you.

=> Note that the configure script is part of the tarball distribution.

One has now to execute it giving options
	./configure --help
will list them. Use the '--enable-debug' if you want to develop new
functionalities.

  b) Mac OS-X
     --------

To build sources, we recommand the usage of fink
	http://fink.sourceforge.net/
This will help you in installing the required softwares.

  c) MS-Windows
     ----------

One has to install cygwin to compile ff3d. Get it at
	http://cygwin.com/

7) More informations
   =================

  a) Mailing lists
     -------------

Four mailing lists are related to ff3d. They are also hosted by
Savannah. One can subscribe to them at
	http://savannah.nongnu.org/mail/?group=ff3d

  b) contact us
     ----------

The best way to contact us, is to write at
	ff3d-users@nongnu.org

If you want to ask question non specific to ff3d, one can write email
to
	freefem@ann.jussieu.fr

-- 
Comments are welcome.

  Project leader:
	- Olivier Pironneau <Olivier.Pironneau@math.jussieu.fr>

  Developers:
	- Stphane Del Pino <Stephane.DelPino@math.jussieu.fr>
	- Ccile Dobrzynski <dobrzyns@ann.jussieu.fr>

  Contributor:
	- Pascal Hav <Pascal.Have@math.jussieu.fr>

  Debian Packager:
	- Christophe Prud'homme <prudhomm@debian.org>