Easy pre/post-processing of finite elements with custom symbolic-objects: A self-expressive Python interface

This study presents an experimental object-oriented (OO) application-programming interface (API) that aims to facilitate the programming of custom pre/post-processing modules for finite element (FE) developers/researchers. The proposed API does not claim to be a full-fledged FE pre/post-processor, but aims to provide an alternative perspective in FE-software design. In this context, a variety of programming techniques are provided to enable the user to develop custom code with concise and descriptive statements. The API is presented in the form of several symbolic-objects in which the very core FE programming operations are abstracted by utilizing metaprogramming and advanced Python language features in an effort to enable the user benefit from these symbols in his/her custom pre/post-processing modules automatically. The examples given show that, this approach results in a concise and self-expressive data-representation layer that can be used flexibly in the processing of different FE discretization schemes.