Hi Bart,

Gmsh already use the OpenCascade library to import STEP files, which is the 
format we recommend (instead of IGES).

To build your geometry, you can try Salome ( http://salome-platform.org/ ), 
which also use OpenCascade.

You can test it easily with a Live DVD : 
http://caelinux.com/CMS/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=49&Itemid=40

Regards,

Dave

--
David Colignon, Ph.D.
Collaborateur Logistique du F.R.S.-FNRS
CÉCI - Consortium des Équipements de Calcul Intensif
ACE - Applied & Computational Electromagnetics
Sart-Tilman B28
Université de Liège
4000 Liège - BELGIQUE
Tél: +32 (0)4 366 37 32
Fax: +32 (0)4 366 29 10
WWW:    http://hpc.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/
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On 22/03/11 16:35, Bart Vandewoestyne wrote:
Hello list,

Up until now, I have been working with simple, quite academic 2D
geometries that I could easily 'program' as a .geo file.

As I will switch to 3D in the near future and my geometries might
become more complex and less academic, I think I will have to
leave gmsh for creating my geometries...  For complex 3D solid
modeling or CAD, I have the impression that gmsh is rather
limited (please correct me if I'm wrong) and I will probably need
to switch to a more dedicated 3D solid modeling or CAD tool that
has a nice and intuitive GUI and which allows me to create my 3D
geometries interactively.

Let's call '3D-tool' the external tool that I will use for my 3D
solid modeling, then I have two questions:

1) What file format should my 3D-tool be able to export to?  What
is the best file format to use for maximum compatibility and ease
of use in gmsh? (I prefer open file formats... so if there is one
to recommend here, I would be happy to hear).

2) Knowing that I am only interested in Open Source software that
runs on both Linux and Windows, what would probably be the best
3D solid modeling / CAD tool to use?  My first google searches
resulted in BRL-CAD, FreeCAD and Open CASCADE

   http://brlcad.org/
   http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Main_Page
   http://www.opencascade.org/

Is any of these three preferable in combination with gmsh?  Or are
there even other better programs?

Kind regards,
Bart



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