FEM FrontISTR Workbench

Introduction
The FEM FrontISTR Workbench is a FreeCAD addon that enables FrontISTR, an open-source large-scale parallel FEM program for nonlinear structural analysis.



Intended work-flow

 * 1) Set up an analysis model by FEM module (in the same way as calculiX).
 * 2) Switch module to "FrontISTR" and create a FrontISTR solver object.
 * 3) Open the task panel of SolverFISTRTools and set working directory.
 * 4) Click "Write input file"
 * 5) Click "Run FrontISTR"
 * 6) Check FISTR_Results for post processing.

Features

 * static analysis, element check
 * geometrical linear|nonlinear analysis
 * elements: 1st/2nd order tetrahedron
 * loads: mechanical concentrated and distributed loads, gravity
 * boundary: points fixed or displacement
 * step control: auto time increment and cutback
 * linear equation solver
 * iterative
 * preconditioner: AMG, SSOR, Diagonal, ILU(k)(k=0,1,2)
 * method: CG, BiCGSTAB, GMRES, GPBiCG
 * direct: MUMPS
 * output file format: AVS, VTK(paraview required)

Features to be supported in the future

 * analysis: thermal transfer, dynamic, eigen, frequency
 * materials(mechanical): elastoplastic, hyper elastic, creep, visco elastic
 * contact
 * MPC(TIE)
 * elements: prism, hexa, beam, shell, truss etc.

Limitations

 * FISTR_Results only contains results for surfaces. If you need the interior results, change Output File Format to VTK and visualize the results with paraview.

Benchmark results
See https://github.com/FrontISTR/FEM_FrontISTR/tree/master/sample/benchmarks.

Automatic
Under preparation.

Manual
See How to install additional workbenches

Prerequisites

 * FreeCAD v0.19+
 * Paraview (optional)

FrontISTR Solver Installation
FrontISTR binaries will be automatically downloaded and installed on the first run. If the download does not proceed, please follow the steps below to install the solver.

Windows

 * 1) Download FrontISTR-latest.zip
 * 2) Create directory FEM_FrontISTR/bin
 * 3) Extract FrontISTR-latest.zip and put all files in FEM_FrontISTR/bin directory.

Linux
Under preparation.

Mac
Under preparation.

Tools

 * [[Image:FEM_SolverCalculixCxxtools.svg|32px]] Solver FrontISTR Standard: Creates a new FrontISTR solver for this analysis.