Open FEM2D Studio

Open-source 2D Finite Element Method solver for structural analysis.
Part of the OpenAEC Foundation portfolio.

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Features

• Beam and plate element analysis (2D)
• Steel, timber, and concrete profile libraries
• Nonlinear solver (Newton-Raphson)
• Canvas-based interactive mesh editor
• A4 report generation (HTML + browser-print to PDF)
• Multi-language UI (EN, NL, ES, FR, IT, ZH)

Tech Stack

• Frontend: React 18 + TypeScript + Vite
• Desktop wrapper: Tauri v2 (Phase C — currently transitioning from Electron)
• Solver backend: Python (in backend/ — runs as separate process)

Development

npm install
npm run dev          # Vite dev server (browser only)
npm run tauri:dev    # Desktop app (Phase C onward)
npm run build        # Production frontend
npm run tauri:build  # Production desktop installer

Build prerequisites

• Node.js ≥ 18
• Rust toolchain (for Tauri builds — install via rustup)
• WebView2 runtime (Windows — included in Win11 by default)

Windows toolchain note

This project builds on both x86_64-pc-windows-gnu (MinGW, no extra install) and x86_64-pc-windows-msvc (Visual Studio Build Tools).

The Tauri dependency tree (~366 crates) can overflow the GNU ld.exe symbol table — src-tauri/Cargo.toml ships profile tweaks (debug=0, strip="debuginfo") that keep MinGW happy at the cost of slightly less dev debug info.

For full debug builds, switch to MSVC:

rustup default stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

This requires Visual Studio Build Tools 2022 (or full VS) with the "Desktop development with C++" workload.

License

CC BY-SA 4.0 — see LICENSE.md

About OpenAEC Foundation

OpenAEC Foundation develops free, open-source tools for the built environment. Build free. Build together. — openaec.org