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Sofa Framework is :

an Open Source framework primarily targeted at real-time simulation, with an emphasis on medical simulation.

Sofa framework has many interesting features which make the simulation and creating of models more easier . Sofa comes with example files , you can open them from its example directory . which include , very interesting examples , can be used for start-up if you wanna play around Sofa .

What Sofa can do :

( feature listed at Sofa`s site )

• Create complex and evolving simulations by combining new algorithms with existing algorithms
• Modify most parameters of the simulation (deformable behavior, surface representation, solver, constraints, collision algorithm, …) by simply editing a XML file
• Build complex models from simpler ones using a scene-graph description
• Efficiently simulate the dynamics of interacting objects using abstract equation solvers
• Reuse and easily compare a variety of available methods
• Transparently parallelize complex computations using semantics based on data dependencies
• Use new generations of GPUs through the CUDA API to greatly improve computation times

Those features as Sofa nutshell , hopefully , Sofa team will expand those features later   .

Saving , Exporting , and Graphs :
Files : Sofa saves the files into *.scn file , which is XML file , can be easily edited by any text-editor . Sofa also can export png image , from the current working file , as well as can record an animation .

Documentation , Manuals & tutorials  :

In my installation at ubuntu 9.04 , Help menu is disabled , also most of the Sofa directories are located at ” /usr/share/sofa/ ” also same as recording directory . which i needed to change .
Documentation , manuals  , tutorials are available at Sofa site , which is more that rich at the moment . in documentation and manuals not for tutorials .

There are also a set of  interesting publications regarding SOFA : which are published in 2007 , 2008 & 2009 . very useful for who are interested in medical simulation .

Projects :
Interesting projects you can found at Sofa`s projects section , which are good examples of Sofa usage .

Note for ubuntu / linux user :
You may need to disable compiz before running SOFA .

Resources :

Sofa`s website ,

Soda`s Wikipedia page ,

Collaborative Development of an open framework for medical simulation – link -

Hamza Emadeen Mousa

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