7. Solver module

Five external solvers can be interfaced simultaneously with Gmsh.

If you just want to start a solver from the solver module, with no further interactions between the solver and Gmsh, just edit the options relative to one of the five available solvers (e.g., Solver.Name0, Solver.Executable0, …; see Solver options list), and set the corresponding “client-server” option to zero (e.g., Solver.ClientServer0 = 0). This doesn't require any modification to be made to the solver.

If you want the solver to interact with Gmsh (for error messages, option definitions, post-processing, etc.), you need to include ‘GmshSocket.h’ in your code and add the appropriate function calls inside your program. You can then proceed as in the previous case, but this time you should set the client-server option to 1 (e.g., Solver.ClientServer0 = 1), so that Gmsh and the solver can communicate through a Unix socket. See Solver example, for an example of how to interface a C++ solver. Bindings for solvers written in other languages (C, Perl and Python) are available in the source distribution.