Simulation Open Framework Architecture
Simulation Open Framework Architecture (SOFA) is an open source framework primarily targeted at real-time physical simulation, with an emphasis on medical simulation. It is mostly intended for the research community to help develop newer algorithms, but can also be used as an efficient prototyping tool or as a physics engine. Features. Based on an advanced software architecture, SOFA allows users to: Scene graph. A key aspect of SOFA is the use of a scene graph to organize and process the elements of a simulation while clearly separating the computation tasks from their possibly parallel scheduling . The description of a SOFA simulation can easily be done in an XML file. For even more flexibility, a Python plugin allows scripting simulations using the Python language. Basically, a SOFA scene-graph is composed with: Plugins. To extend its capacities and provide more features, SOFA is bundled with a lot of plugins: Community. SOFA Day. Organized each year, the SOFA Day is a one-day event dedicated to SOFA. This event is open to everyone interested in SOFA, from beginner to advanced users. It contains an introduction to SOFA, several tutorials (adapted to the audience) and a large time  to experience SOFA with the help of the instructors. SOFA Consortium. Exactly ten years after the first commit in SOFA, Inria founded the SOFA Consortium in December 2015. The Consortium missions are to: