ElmerGUI does not have an exchangeable file format. But the .sif file seems to contain all of the information needed to define a simulation -- except for the mesh of course. So it seems like it would be a good idea to make a .sif file parser for ElmerGUI.
The egproject.xml file doesn't work, as Elmer either throws an error or crashes if the GUI modules list differs between the creating machine and receiving machine.
Without this capability, there's no way to collaborate. I can send someone the .sif file, but then we have two bad options:
- (S)he needs to re-enter all of the parameters into ElmerGUI by hand, then we try to let each other know of the changes we make, and hope we aren't inconsistent.
- Only one person gets to use ElmerGUI, the other(s) must hand-edit the .sif file.
It seems like a .sif file importer should not be too hard, as every element in it corresponds to an ElmerGUI action. Has anyone worked on this, or thought about it?
Thanks,
Adam
ElmerGUI feature request: .sif file parser/importer
Re: ElmerGUI feature request: .sif file parser/importer
Hi Adam,
I have just stumbled across your post. A sif file importer would indeed be very nice. The problem is that not everything that can be done in a sif file can be done in ElmerGUI. And it would be quite some work to reverse-engineer a sif file - you would need to include much information in such a parser, where every keyword for every solver would have to figure. Since there is very little work on ElmerGUI (the Elmer team focuses on the solver part AFAIK), such a parser would have to be implemented by someone else. The best would be a sif to egproject.xml translator. If someone has the time to do it...
However, I have maybe a partial solution for your problem:
HTH,
Matthias
I have just stumbled across your post. A sif file importer would indeed be very nice. The problem is that not everything that can be done in a sif file can be done in ElmerGUI. And it would be quite some work to reverse-engineer a sif file - you would need to include much information in such a parser, where every keyword for every solver would have to figure. Since there is very little work on ElmerGUI (the Elmer team focuses on the solver part AFAIK), such a parser would have to be implemented by someone else. The best would be a sif to egproject.xml translator. If someone has the time to do it...
However, I have maybe a partial solution for your problem:
I have written a small project file converter which adapts the egproject.xml to a different set of solvers. You can find it here viewtopic.php?f=4&t=847. This may enable you to exchange egproject.xml with someone else having a different solver configuration.The egproject.xml file doesn't work, as Elmer either throws an error or crashes if the GUI modules list differs between the creating machine and receiving machine.
HTH,
Matthias