I think I am at cross purposes with several people in this thread. The BEM code I am writing is a non-interactive back-end batch program designed to run remotely on clusters or locally on a workstation/desktop. It doesn't have a GUI nor does it need one. I personally prefer writing scripts to generate solid models and meshes but others can use GUI programs such as any CAD program that outputs STEP files, mesh generators like salome and gmsh have their own GUIs. The plot above was done in paraview GUI but there are alternatives like visit. It's a sequence of stages linked together with files and, usually, a controlling script if you wish to efficiently parameterise your models.
In the example above I wrote a python script which created a solid model (Open Cascade via gmsh python wrapper), generated a mesh (gmsh via gmsh python api), wrote an acousto input file (using libconfig python api), ran acousto which wrote vtk files for paraview, paraview GUI to plot (could also have plotted from python since paraview also has a python api). To see the results for a different distance from the wall I change zwall=-0.3 to zwall=-0.5 in the python file in vscode, hit run in vscode, watched the vscode output window to check all stages worked, hit F5 in paraview and there is the plot for the new wall distance. It takes a bit of learning (one of the main objectives for the project) and a bit of setting up but after that it is a fast and reliable way to work. £10k+ per year per seat COMSOL software might be a bit more productive but isn't an option for hobbyists on normal incomes.
In the example above I wrote a python script which created a solid model (Open Cascade via gmsh python wrapper), generated a mesh (gmsh via gmsh python api), wrote an acousto input file (using libconfig python api), ran acousto which wrote vtk files for paraview, paraview GUI to plot (could also have plotted from python since paraview also has a python api). To see the results for a different distance from the wall I change zwall=-0.3 to zwall=-0.5 in the python file in vscode, hit run in vscode, watched the vscode output window to check all stages worked, hit F5 in paraview and there is the plot for the new wall distance. It takes a bit of learning (one of the main objectives for the project) and a bit of setting up but after that it is a fast and reliable way to work. £10k+ per year per seat COMSOL software might be a bit more productive but isn't an option for hobbyists on normal incomes.
