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Installation and Running:

Please refer to the quick user's guide to iPic3D.

If you're new to GitHub, and want to contribute to this project, here you can find a developers guide on how to work with iPic3D in GitHub.

First steps with iPic3D:

We recommend first time users to complete the GEM Challenge (an implementation of the famous simulation challenge that changed the history of reconnection: Birn, J., et al. "Geospace Environmental Modeling (GEM) magnetic reconnection challenge." Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics 106.A3 (2001): 3715-3719.

Methods behind iPic3D:

If you are interested in the methods used by iPic3D, a description of the Particle in Cell method and of the methods used in iPic3D was presented at the School in Les Houches on May 2016. h5Xfms

Visualisation of iPic3D output:

The code saves the output in two ways:

1. WriteMethod = default saves the data for each processor in hdf5 files. The directory postprocessing_tools has tools to combine them and convert them to other formats.
2. WriteMethod = h5hut combines and saves the data of all processors to a single hdf5 file (one for the fields and one for the particles). The hdf5 file can then be visualised with any software that reads hdf5. For preview, a wrapper file is needed to provide the grid information. The directory postprocessing_tools/c++/Xdmf has a C++ code that can be compiled (with cmake) and produces a wrapper xdmf file that allows preview to obtain the needed geometric and file information. The h5Xdmf code needs an input file that gives the needed geometric information, an example is provided in the folder. After compiling the h5Xdmf C++ code, run it as:h5Xdmf h5Xdmf_input_file.inp. Paraview can then read the xmf wrapper file produced by this code using the XDMF Reader.