Plugins#

The ALFAsim-SDK help developers to create plugins for ALFAsim application. Plugins can extend the ALFAsim capabilities in a lot of ways, from adding a simple input to a custom calculation of solver equations.

Some examples of the capabilities that can be extended are:

  • Creation of user-defined GUI models, allowing custom models to be available over the Tree and in the Model Explorer.

  • Registration of additional variables that are not nonlinear system’s unknowns, for the ALFAsim solver. Also called “secondary variables”

  • Customization of the hydrodynamic models, supporting the additions of custom Phases/Fields/Layers.

  • Support for inclusion of custom mass, momentum and energy equations.

  • Support for calculating source terms to solver equations.

  • Support for calculating/updating plugin-registered Simulation Variables

For a list of all capabilities that can be expanded check the Full API Reference in the documentation.

Anyone with programming skills can create a Plugin for ALFAsim. To make it possible, ALFAsim-SDK provides hooks to customize the solver and the user interface. To customize the solver, an API in C is provided for application written in C/C++, while, for user interface customization, an API in Python allows the developer to customize the interface in a declarative way.

To get quick and running with ALFAsim-SDK you can read the Quick Start and the Plugin by Example sections

After reading the quick start section and the plugin by example section, check out these additional resources to help better understand the plugins infrastructure:

Dig deeper into specific topics: