Running Gmsh on your system

3.1 Interactive mode

To launch Gmsh in interactive mode, just double-click on the Gmsh icon, or type
> gmsh
at your shell prompt in a terminal. This will open the main Gmsh window, with a
tree-like
menu on the left, a graphic area on the right, and a status bar at the bottom. (You
can
detach the tree menu using ‘Window->Attach/Detach Menu’.)
To open the first tutorial file (see Appendix A [Tutorial], page 121), select the
‘File->Open’
menu, and choose t1.geo. When using a terminal, you can specify the file name
directly on
the command line, i.e.:
> gmsh t1.geo
To perform the mesh generation, go to the mesh module (by selecting ‘Mesh’ in the
tree)
and choose the dimension (‘1D’ will mesh all the lines; ‘2D’ will mesh all the
surfaces—as
well as all the lines if ‘1D’ was not called before; ‘3D’ will mesh all the volumes
—and all
the surfaces if ‘2D’ was not called before). To save the resulting mesh in the
current mesh
format click on ‘Save’, or select the appropriate format and file name with the
‘File->Export’
menu. The default mesh file name is based on the name of the current active model,
with
an appended extension depending on the mesh format1.
To create a new geometry or to modify an existing geometry, select ’Geometry’ in
the tree.
For example, to create a spline, select ‘Elementary’, ‘Add’, ‘New’ and ‘Spline’.
You will
then be asked to select a list of points, and to type e to finish the selection (or
q to abort it).
Once the interactive command is completed, a text string is automatically added at
the end
of the current script file. You can edit the script file by hand at any time by
pressing the
‘Edit’ button in the ‘Geometry’ menu and then reloading the model by pressing
‘Reload’.
For example, it is often faster to define variables and points directly in the
script file, and
then use the GUI to define the lines, the surfaces and the volumes interactively.
Several files can be loaded simultaneously in Gmsh. When specified on the command
line,
the first one defines the active model and the others are ‘merged’ into this model.
You can
merge such files with the ‘File->Merge’ menu. For example, to merge the post-
processing
views contained in the files view1.pos and view5.msh together with the geometry of
the first
tutorial Section A.1 [t1.geo], page 121, you can type the following command:
> gmsh t1.geo view1.pos view5.msh
In the Post-Processing module (select ‘Post-Processing’ in the tree), three items
will appear,
respectively labeled ‘A scalar map’, ‘Nodal scalar map’ and ‘Element 1 vector’. In
this
example the views contain several time steps: you can loop through them with the
small
“remote-control” icons in the status bar. A mouse click on the view name will
toggle the
visibility of the selected view, while a click on the arrow button on the right
will provide
access to the view’s options.
1 Nearly all the interactive commands have keyboard shortcuts: see Section 3.5
[Keyboard shortcuts], page 16,
or select ‘Help->Keyboard and Mouse Usage’ in the menu. For example, to quickly
save a mesh, you can
press Ctrl+Shift+s.12 Gmsh 3.0
Note that all the options specified interactively can also be directly specified in
the script
files. You can save the current options of the current active model with the ‘File-
>Save
Model Options’. This will create a new option file with the same filename as the
active
model, but with an extra ‘.opt’ extension added. The next time you open this model,
the
associated options will be automatically loaded, too. To save the current options
as your
default preferences for all future Gmsh sessions, use the ‘File->Save Options As
Default’
menu instead. Finally, you can also save the current options in an arbitrary file
by choosing
the ‘Gmsh options’ format in ‘File->Export’.
For more information about available options (and how to reset them to their
default values),
see Appendix B [Options], page 151. A full list of options with their current
values is also
available in the ‘Help->Current Options’ menu.
3.2 Non-interactive mode
Gmsh can be run non-interactively in ‘batch’ mode, without GUI2. For example, to
mesh
the first tutorial in batch mode, just type:
> gmsh t1.geo -2
To mesh the same example, but with the background mesh available in the file
bgmesh.pos,
type:
> gmsh t1.geo -2 -bgm bgmesh.pos
For the list of all command-line options, see Section 3.3 [Command-line options],
page 12.
In particular, any complicated workflow can be written in a .geo file, and this
file can be
executed as a script using
> gmsh script.geo -
The script can contain e.g. meshing commands, like Mesh 3;.
3.3 Command-line options
Geometry options:
-0 Output model, then exit
-tol float
Set geometrical tolerance
-match Match geometries and meshes
Mesh options:
-1, -2, -3
Perform 1D, 2D or 3D mesh generation, then exit
-o file Specify output file name
-format string
Select output mesh format (auto (default), msh, msh1, msh2, unv, vrml, ply2,
stl, mesh, bdf, cgns, p3d, diff, med, ...)
2 If you compile Gmsh without the GUI (see Appendix C [Compiling the source code],
page 229), this is the
only mode you have access to.Chapter 3: Running Gmsh on your system 13
-bin Use binary format when available
-refine Perform uniform mesh refinement, then exit
-part int Partition after batch mesh generation
-partWeight tri|quad|tet|prism|hex int
Weight of a triangle/quad/etc. during partitioning
-saveall Save all elements (discard physical group definitions)
-parametric
Save vertices with their parametric coordinates
-algo string
Select mesh algorithm (meshadapt, del2d, front2d, delquad, del3d, front3d,
mmg3d, pack)
-smooth int
Set number of mesh smoothing steps
-order int
Set mesh order (1, ..., 5)
-optimize[_netgen]
Optimize quality of tetrahedral elements
-optimize_threshold
Optimize tetrahedral elements that have a qulaity less than a threshold
-optimize_ho
Optimize high order meshes
-ho_[min,max,nlayers]
High-order optimization parameters
-optimize_lloyd
Optimize 2D meshes using Lloyd algorithm
-clscale float
Set global mesh element size scaling factor
-clmin float
Set minimum mesh element size
-clmax float
Set maximum mesh element size
-anisoMax float
Set maximum anisotropy (only used in bamg for now)
-smoothRatio float
Set smoothing ration between mesh sizes at nodes of a same edge (only used in
bamg)
-clcurv Automatically compute element sizes from curvatures
-epslc1d Set accuracy of evaluation of LCFIELD for 1D mesh14 Gmsh 3.0
-swapangle
Set the threshold angle (in degree) between two adjacent faces below which a
swap is allowed
-rand float
Set random perturbation factor
-bgm file Load background mesh from file
-check Perform various consistency checks on mesh
-ignorePartBound
Ignore partitions boundaries
Post-processing options:
-link int Select link mode between views (0, 1, 2, 3, 4)
-combine Combine views having identical names into multi-time-step views
Solver options:
-listen Always listen to incoming connection requests
-minterpreter string
Name of Octave interpreter
-pyinterpreter string
Name of Python interpreter
-run Run ONELAB solver(s)
Display options:
-n Hide all meshes and post-processing views on startup
-nodb Disable double buffering
-numsubedges
Set num of subdivisions for high order element display
-fontsize int
Specify the font size for the GUI
-theme string
Specify FLTK GUI theme
-display string
Specify display
-camera Use camera mode view;
-stereo OpenGL quad-buffered stereo rendering (requires special graphic card)
-gamepad Use gamepad controller if available
Other options:
-, -parse_and_exit
Parse input files, then exitChapter 3: Running Gmsh on your system 15
-new Create new model before merge next file
-merge Merge next files
-open Open next files
-a, -g, -m, -s, -p
Start in automatic, geometry, mesh, solver or post-processing mode
-pid Print process id on stdout
-watch pattern
Pattern of files to merge as they become available
-bg file Load background (image or PDF) file
-v int Set verbosity level
-nopopup Don’t popup dialog windows in scripts
-string "string"
Parse command string at startup
-setnumber name value
Set constant number name=value
-setstring name value
Set constant string name=value
-option file
Parse option file at startup
-convert files
Convert files into latest binary formats, then exit
-cpu Report CPU times for all operations
-version Show version number
-info Show detailed version information
-help Show command line usage