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# Introduction

GetDP (a "General environment for the treatment of Discrete Problems") is a scientific software environment for the numerical solution of integro-differential equations, open to the coupling of physical problems (electromagnetic, thermal, etc.) as well as of numerical methods (finite element method, integral methods, etc.). It can deal with such problems of various dimensions (1D, 2D or 3D) and time states (static, transient or harmonic).

The main feature of GetDP is the closeness between its internal structure (written in C), the organization of data defining discrete problems (written by the user in ASCII data files) and the symbolic mathematical expressions of these problems. Its aim is to be welcoming and of easy use for both development and application levels: it consists of a working environment in which the definition of any problem makes use of a limited number of objects, which makes the environment structured and concise. It therefore gives researchers advanced developing tools and a large freedom in adding new functionalities.

The modeling tools provided by GetDP can be tackled at various levels of complexity: this opens the software to a wide range of activities, such as research, collaboration, education, training and industrial studies.

> Research and collaboration activities |  |
> Education and training activities |  |
> Industrial studies |  |
> How to read this manual |  |

## Research and collaboration activities

The internal structure of the software is very close to the structure used to define discrete problems in the input data files. As a result, a unicity and conciseness of both development and application levels is obtained without any interface between them, which facilitates work of any kind--particularly validations. GetDP permits to rapidly develop tools for the comparison of methods and the exchange of solutions between research teams, which is one of the main aims of collaboration. Moreover, after a short training, GetDP could be used by teams as a basis for their own developments, while allowing a large freedom in the latter.

## Education and training activities

The software environment consists of modeling tools applicable to various physical problems. Education and training can therefore be offered in various domains and at different levels. The closeness between the definition of discrete problems and their symbolic mathematical expressions entails that the theory and mathematical bases of numerical methods, which are essential to anyone who wants to tackle the solving of discrete problems, can be directly followed by their practical applications. These applications can be evolutionary, in the sense that the offered tools are of various levels of complexity. Everyone can tackle, step by step, according to his apprenticeship level, the tools adapted to the solving of more and more complex problems, as well as various methods for the solving of the same problem.

## Industrial studies

The treatment of industrial problems can also be facilitated because GetDP is adapted to the study of a wide range of physical problems using various numerical methods. In particular, adapted made to measure and ready-to-use software could be rapidly developed for given problems.

## How to read this manual

After reading 1. Overview, which depicts the general philosophy of GetDP, you might want to skip 2. Expressions, 3. Objects and 4. Types for objects and directly run the demo files bundled in the distribution on your computer (see section 7. Running GetDP). You should then open these examples with a text editor and compare their structure with the examples given in 5. Short examples and 6. Complete examples. For each new syntax element that you fall onto, you can then go back to 2. Expressions, 3. Objects, and 4. Types for objects, and find in these chapters the detailed description of the syntactic rules as well as all the available options.

Indexes for many concepts (see section Concept index) and for all the syntax elements (see section Syntax index) are available at the end of this manual.

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