[Gmsh] How to associate line elements on boundaries with inner elements

Y JIANG y.jiang at ed.ac.uk
Wed Nov 30 18:31:00 CET 2011


Dear Gmsh gurus,

I just started using Gmsh and found it is really great. But I come
across a problem when I use it with my own finite element solver. Take
2D analysis for instance, the solver needs to know which element and
which face of it in order to assign proper boundary conditions. This is
quite different from Gmsh's standard output, where elements on boundary
are represented as line elements and have no explicit relation with the
inner elements they belong to.

I thought about an awkward way to associate the line elements and inner
elements by comparing the nodes on boundaries. But this seems very
inefficient. A better way would be adding corresponding inner element
tags and the face tags to the line elements. Is it possible to do it in
Gmsh, or are there other better methods in doing so?

Thank you for all your suggestions.

Y Jiang


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