2.3. Further practical software

2.3.1. VSCode as Python IDE

As an editor and IDE for the Python scripts, we highly recommend downloading and installing Visual Studio Code from code.visualstudio.com. After downloading and installing, make sure to install the Python extensions. If you have installed pyoomph in a Conda Environment, make sure to use this environment for the Python interpreter. One rather important setting is to activate the option Python \(>\) Terminal: Execute In File Dir. Thereby, the output of each simulation will be written in a subdirectory with the same name as the simulation script, without the .py extension. To easily find it, search for python.terminal.executeInFileDir in the settings search bar.

You also might want to install the extension PyLance, which allows for type checking and error highlighting during development.

2.3.2. Paraview to visualize the output

While pyoomph can be used without any visualization tools, e.g. by plotting the resulting data by hand or using the plotting framework of pyoomph, it is beneficial to install a viewer for VTU/PVD files, which are the default output files. The typical free software to visualize these files is Paraview, which can be downloaded for free at www.paraview.org. You can open all .vtu and .pvd files you find in the output folder of a pyoomph simulation.