METIS MESH Files

METIS_MESH is a data directory which contains examples of "mesh" files used by the METIS program. METIS can read a mesh file, and partition the elements in a balanced way so that each partition has about the same number of elements, while minimizing the number of cases in which elements from different parts of the partition share an edge or face. This process is designed with the idea that the mesh represents a computation that is to be divided up among various processors, with the stipulation that the amount of interprocessor communication must be limited.

METIS MESH File Characteristics:

• ASCII
• a mesh of N elements is stored in a file of N+1 lines;
• the first line lists the number of elements, and a code that indicates the type of element;
  1. 2D triangles;
  2. 3D tetrahedrons;
  3. 3D hexahedrons ("bricks" with 6 sides and 8 vertices);
  4. 2D quadrilaterals;
• each subsequent line lists the vertices of one element;
• for triangular and tetrahedral elements, the vertices may be listed in any order; quadrilateral and hexahedral elements require that the vertices be listed in a particular order;
• comment lines begin with a "%" sign;

Licensing:

The computer code and data files described and made available on this web page are distributed under the GNU LGPL license.

Reference:

1. George Karypis and Vipin Kumar,
   METIS, a Software Package for Partitioning Unstructured Graphs and Computing Fill-Reduced Orderings of Sparse Matrices;
2. George Karypis and Vipin Kumar,
   A fast and high quality multilevel scheme for partitioning irregular graphs,
   SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing,
   Volume 20, Number 1, 1998, pages 359-392;
3. http://www.cs.umn.edu/~metis,
   The METIS home page;

Sample Files:

• metis.mesh, a mesh of the a region that looks like the word "METIS";
• tri.mesh, a tiny example mesh of a 2D region, using triangular elements;
• tet.mesh, a tiny example mesh of a 3D region, using tetrahedral elements;
• quad.mesh, a tiny example mesh of a 2D region, using quadrilateral elements;
• hex.mesh, a tiny example mesh of a 3D region, using hexahedral (brick) elements;

You can go up one level to the DATA page.