PyDEC: A Python Library for Discretizations of Exterior Calculus.

PyDEC is a Python library implementing Discrete Exterior Calculus (DEC) and lowest order finite element exterior calculus (FEEC) i.e., Whitney forms. The main functionality implemented:

• simplicial complexes of dimension n embeded in dimension N >= n
• abstract simplicial complexes (no embedding needed)
• cubical complexes in all dimensions
• boundary operators for all the above type of complexes
• discrete exterior derivative (i.e., coboundary operator)
• DEC discrete Hodge star (i.e., primal-dual diagonal mass matrix)
• FEEC mass matrix for Whitney forms

The code and companion paper include examples for numerically solving PDEs and computing cohomology: ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, Vol. 39, No. 1, pp. 3:1-3:41, 2012, DOI: 10.1145/2382585.2382588.

Installation:

• cd to the folder where you cloned PyDEC
• pip install .

Note about installation:

• There is another package called pydec which has nothing to do with this package. If you simply do pip install pydec then you will get that other package. PyDEC has existed since about 2008, but we were too slow in grabbing pydec name on pip :-(
• So for now, please install by first cloning or downloading the source and then using the installation instructions above.