FEniCS is a really nice tool for finite element modelling in python. It is difficult to install FEniCS on windows. The official instructions use a docker image. which I think is a bit heavy handed. I therefore installed it in a WSL-Ubuntu (Windows Subsystem for Linux). My experience with that has been friction free, so here are some very brief notes of what I did.
In windows
In VS Code
- Install the “WSL remote” plug-in
- Install the “Python” plugin (the one from microsoft).
In your freshly installed ubuntu:
- Install mambaforge for Linux x86_64 (amd64)
mamba install matplotlib numpy ipykernel fenics
code my_test.ipynb
(you might have to install/enable the VSCODe python plugin for WSL again.)
In new VS Code editor window
The final command should open up a new notebook file in a new VS code editor window. In this new VS Code window, test that you can import fenics.
- Add this line to the my_test.ipynb file
from fenics import *