Application Builder & Java Methods

Taught by Alejandro Cifuentes López.

In many research or development centres, a small group of numerical simulation experts serves a much larger group of people working in product development, in production tasks or as students training in various physical phenomena and processes. To enable this small group to serve the much larger group, the COMSOL Multiphysics software contains functionalities for creating specific simulation applications. The Application Builder allows simulation experts to create intuitive and highly specific user interfaces for their models, which are converted into ready-to-use customised applications.

The content of this course includes the description of the Application Builder and its basic tools, the creation of Forms and the programming of Methods. The Application Builder is embedded directly in the COMSOL Multiphysics desktop and provides a complete set of tools for method programming and the production of user interfaces. We will provide an overview of the basic tools and editors used in the design of forms, windows and methods. We will also discuss the tools for coding and debugging the application.

Forms are the custom user interfaces that will be used within applications. They can contain multiple objects, such as input fields, graphics, buttons, etc. In the Methods section, we will describe and use the different tools available to generate coded methods within our application or multiphysics model. We will deal with language elements, automatic code recording, syntax checking, search tools, etc.

COMSOL Multiphysics contains a Java code generator and editor that allows you to program methods to obtain full control over the behavior of the model or application you are developing. You can put virtually any code you want in the Java method of the model or application. For example, we can write code to create random or recursive geometries, read data from a text file describing the geometry design, export data in a custom format, algorithmically modify the physics of the model, automate the configuration of the study, and so on.

In conclusion, the course focuses on the practical learning of the Application Builder, the complement of COMSOL Multiphysics that allows the designer to build a multiphysics simulation application, with a very specific use, to distribute it to external staff, colleagues or even general public. In addition, we will learn, from a practical point of view, the generation, use and edition of methods in COMSOL Multiphysics from a general programming in Java.