General concepts » I/O in Rodin » Mesh File Formats

Introduction

Rodin supports several mesh file formats for reading and writing meshes. Each format has its own strengths and is suited to different workflows.

MFEM Format

The MFEM format is a text-based mesh format used by the MFEM finite element library.

Mesh mesh;
mesh = mesh.UniformGrid(Polytope::Type::Triangle, {16, 16});
mesh.save("output.mesh", IO::FileFormat::MFEM);

Mesh mesh;
mesh.load("input.mesh", IO::FileFormat::MFEM);

MEDIT Format

The MEDIT format (also known as .mesh format from INRIA) is commonly used with the MMG remeshing platform and other INRIA tools.

mesh.save("output.mesh", IO::FileFormat::MEDIT);

Mesh mesh;
mesh.load("input.mesh", IO::FileFormat::MEDIT);

#include <RodinExternal/MMG.h>

// Load mesh in MEDIT format
MMG::Mesh mesh;
mesh.load("domain.mesh", IO::FileFormat::MEDIT);

// ... perform remeshing operations ...

// Save result
mesh.save("remeshed.mesh", IO::FileFormat::MEDIT);

Format Conversion

Converting between formats is straightforward — simply load in one format and save in another:

Mesh mesh;
mesh.load("input.mesh", IO::FileFormat::MEDIT);
mesh.save("output.mesh", IO::FileFormat::MFEM);

Comparison

Geometry Coverage

Mesh I/O tests cover every local polytope geometry used by Rodin:

MEDIT and MFEM are tested with string round trips for all of these geometries. HDF5 persistence and XDMF visualization output are tested over the same set. The 0D case is represented as point topology embedded in a coordinate space so that formats with coordinate arrays can still store the vertex position.

See Also

• I/O in Rodin overview
• Mesh I/O operations
• Meshes overview