gmshparser 0.1.4

gmshparser is a lightweight, 100 % tested and well documented package that aims to reliably parse the Gmsh ascii file format (.msh). The package does not introduce any external dependencies and thus fits well with the needs of your own FEM research code as a small stand-alone package. Project is hosted on GitHub (https://github.com/ahojukka5/gmshparser) and documentation can be found from ReadTheDocs (https://gmshparser.readthedocs.io/).

gmshparser - parse Gmsh .msh file format

Package author: Jukka Aho (@ahojukka5)

Gmshparser is a small Python package which aims to do only one thing: parse Gmsh mesh file format. Package does not have any external dependencies to other packages and it aims to be a simple stand-alone solution for a common problem: how to import mesh to your favourite research FEM code?

Project documentation is located at: https://gmshparser.readthedocs.io/

Installing package

Using pip:

pip install gmshparser

Usage

To read mesh into Mesh object, use command parse:

import gmshparser
mesh = gmshparser.parse("data/testmesh.msh")
print(mesh)

Output is

Mesh name: data/testmesh.msh
Mesh version: 4.1
Number of nodes: 6
Minimum node tag: 1
Maximum node tag: 6
Number of node entities: 1
Number of elements: 2
Minimum element tag: 1
Maximum element tag: 2
Number of element entities: 1

gmshparser can also help you even if you don't make FEM code in Python. You can print nodes and elements in a simpler format with command-line tools, making it easier to read an element mesh with C ++ or Fortran, for example. To extract nodes:

gmshparser data/testmesh.msh nodes

6
1 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
2 1.000000 0.000000 0.000000
3 1.000000 1.000000 0.000000
4 0.000000 1.000000 0.000000
5 2.000000 0.000000 0.000000
6 2.000000 1.000000 0.000000

To extract elements:

gmshparser data/testmesh.msh elements

2
1 3 1 2 3 4
2 3 2 5 6 3

Here, the first column is element id, second is element type and rest of integers are connectivity.

If you are writing your FEM stuff with Python, then you have access to the all relevant properties of the model using mesh object. For further information on how to access nodes, elements, physical groups, and other things what Gmsh provides, take a look of documentation.

Contributing to project

Like in other open source projects, contributions are always welcome to this too! If you have some great ideas how to make this package better, feature requests etc., you can open an issue on gmshparser's issue tracker or contact me (ahojukka5 at gmail.com) directly.