solidskkss 0.1
A simple Finite Element program
License: MIT
Keywords: finite-elements fem scientific-computing

---
title: "SolidsPy: 2D-Finite Element Analysis with Python"
---

![](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AppliedMechanics-EAFIT/SolidsPy/master/docs/img/wrench.png)

[![PyPI download](https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/solidspy.svg)](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/continuum_mechanics)

[![Documentation Status](https://readthedocs.org/projects/solidspy/badge/?version=latest)](https://solidspy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

[![Downloads frequency](https://img.shields.io/pypi/dm/solidspy)](https://pypistats.org/packages/solidspy)

[![image](https://zenodo.org/badge/48294591.svg)](https://zenodo.org/badge/latestdoi/48294591)

A simple finite element analysis code for 2D elasticity problems. The
code uses as input simple-to-create text files defining a model in terms
of nodal, element, material and load data.

-   Documentation: <http://solidspy.readthedocs.io>
-   GitHub: <https://github.com/AppliedMechanics-EAFIT/SolidsPy>
-   PyPI: <https://pypi.org/project/solidspy/>
-   Free and open source software: [MIT
    license](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License)

# Features

-   It is based on an open-source environment.
-   It is easy to use.
-   The code allows to find displacement, strain and stress solutions
    for arbitrary two-dimensional domains discretized into finite
    elements and subject to point loads.
-   The code is organized in independent modules for pre-processing,
    assembly and post-processing allowing the user to easily modify it
    or add features like new elements or analyses pipelines.
-   It was created with academic and research purposes.
-   It has been used to tech the following courses:
    -   Computational Modeling.
    -   Introduction to the Finite Element Methods.

# Installation

The code is written in Python and it depends on `numpy`, and `scipy`
and. It has been tested under Windows, Mac, Linux and Android.

To install *SolidsPy* open a terminal and type:

    pip install solidspy

To specify through a GUI the folder where the input files are stored you
will need to install
[easygui](http://easygui.readthedocs.org/en/master/).

To easily generate the required SolidsPy text files out of a
[Gmsh](http://gmsh.info/) model you will need
[meshio](https://github.com/nschloe/meshio).

These two can be installed with:

    pip install easygui
    pip install meshio

# How to run a simple model

For further explanation check the
[docs](http://solidspy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/).

Let\'s suppose that we have a simple model represented by the following
files (see [tutorials/square
example](http://solidspy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorials/square_example.html)
for further explanation).

-   `nodes.txt`

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
    0  0.00  0.00   0  -1
    1  2.00  0.00   0  -1
    2  2.00  2.00   0   0
    3  0.00  2.00   0   0
    4  1.00  0.00  -1  -1
    5  2.00  1.00   0   0
    6  1.00  2.00   0   0
    7  0.00  1.00   0   0
    8  1.00  1.00   0   0

-   `eles.txt`

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
    0   1   0   0   4   8   7
    1   1   0   4   1   5   8
    2   1   0   7   8   6   3
    3   1   0   8   5   2   6

-   `mater.txt`

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
    1.0  0.3

-   `loads.txt`

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
    3  0.0  1.0
    6  0.0  2.0
    2  0.0  1.0

Run it in Python as follows:

``` python
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt  # load matplotlib
from solidspy import solids_GUI  # import our package
disp = solids_GUI()  # run the Finite Element Analysis
plt.show()    # plot contours
```

For Mac users it is suggested to use an IPython console to run the
example.

# License

This project is licensed under the [MIT
license](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License). The documents are
licensed under [Creative Commons Attribution
License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

# Citation

To cite SolidsPy in publications use

> Nicolás Guarín-Zapata, Juan Gomez (2020). SolidsPy: Version 1.0.16
> (Version v1.0.16). Zenodo. <http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4029270>

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

``` bibtex
@software{solidspy,
 title = {SolidsPy: 2D-Finite Element Analysis with Python},
 version = {1.0.16},
 author = {Guarín-Zapata, Nicolás and Gómez, Juan},
 year = 2020,
 keywords = {Python, Finite elements, Scientific computing, Computational mechanics},
 abstract = {SolidsPy is a simple finite element analysis code for
   2D elasticity problems. The code uses as input simple-to-create text
   files defining a model in terms of nodal, element, material and
   load data.},
 url = {https://github.com/AppliedMechanics-EAFIT/SolidsPy},
 doi = {http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4029270}
}
```