OOFEM User Manual

Authors: Bořek Patzák, Martin Horák, Vít Šmilauer, Milan Jirásek, et al.

Version: 3.0, Date: Oct 26, 2026

This manual is the entry point to OOFEM, a parallel, object-oriented finite element solver for mechanical, transport and fluid mechanics problems. It takes you from installing the code, through running your first analysis, to reading the results and exporting them for visualization. The individual components you can use in an input file are documented in detail in the companion manuals listed in Documentation.

The sources live on GitHub; questions are welcome on the OOFEM forum.

Contents:

• Introduction
  • General Features
  • Documentation
  • OOFEM Ecosystem
• Installation
  • Installation options
  • Binary package installation - Windows
  • Binary installation - Unix/Linux
  • Installation from source
• Getting started
  • Running the first analysis
  • Where to go next
• Understanding input file
  • An Example
  • The XML input format
• Understanding output file
  • Controlling the content
  • Header section
  • Solution step section(s)
• Postprocessing
  • Configuring vtk export
  • Postprocessing in paraview
  • Other export modules
• Using OOFEM from Python
  • Getting the module
  • Running an existing input file
  • Building a problem programmatically
  • Calling Python from the input file

Indices and tables

• Index

• Module Index

• Search Page