Install#

Installation methods#

There are several easy ways to install pymead.

  • Method 1 is for users interested in designing, analyzing, and optimizing airfoils or airfoil systems, but not for those interested in using the pymead classes and functions in Python code.

  • Methods 2 & 3 are designed for users interested in using the various pymead classes and functions in their Python code and/or using the GUI to develop airfoil systems.

  • Method 4 is for those who wish to use the bleeding-edge version of pymead or for advanced users who wish to extend and/or develop pymead in addition to using both the GUI and API.

These installation methods are summarized in the table below and described in depth in the sections following the table.

Method

Description

GUI

API

Develop

Latest

1

Native Application

✅

❌

❌

❌

2

pip

✅

✅

❌

❌

3

IDE + pip

✅

✅

❌

❌

4

Git

✅

✅

✅

✅

Method 1: Native Application (GUI Only)#

For users merely wishing to use pymead rather than develop pymead, this is the recommended install method.

Go to the release page on GitHub and download the .exe file under the “Assets” dropdown menu. Click on the .exe and follow the self-contained instructions to install pymead. For this install method, neither Python nor any of the “required” dependencies are necessary to run the pymead executable. Only the “optional” dependencies are necessary to run some commands in pymead.

You will be notified automatically at application startup if there is an update for pymead available. On Windows, the installation wizard will handle the uninstall/upgrade process for you automatically once it is downloaded and run.

To run pymead, double-click on the pymead program created in the selected install location. Alternatively, type pymead in the Windows search bar and press enter.

Go to the release page on GitHub and download the -linux.tar.gz file. Then, move the tarball to the desired location and extract it in that location by double-clicking the tarball in a file explorer or by navigating to the tarball’s location and using

tar -xvzf <pymead-tarball-name.tar.gz>

in a terminal. In Linux, the recommended method for opening the GUI is through a terminal command. The location where pymead was extracted should be added to the system’s path. This can be done temporarily using the export command in a terminal (for example, if pymead was extracted to ~/Documents/pymead)…

export PATH="~/Documents/pymead:$PATH"

…or by adding the previous command to the end of .bashrc file and sourcing it:

nano ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

With this permanent save method, pymead can be opened from any terminal in any location simply by typing pymead. Note that the directory used in the steps above should be the on containing both the pymead executable and the _internals directory. When downloading updates to pymead (you will be notified of these at application startup when they are available), you can simply replace the original extracted folder with the newly extracted folder. It is very important to not remove the pymead application from the folder that contains the _internals folder, since pymead needs these to run.

Method 2: pip (GUI + API)#

Use pip to install the latest stable version of pymead into the environment from the Python Package Index (PyPi):

pip install pymead

Important

At the moment, you must have a Python version >=3.10 to install pymead using pip.

This method automatically installs all required dependencies that are not yet installed. It also allows the user to easily update pymead if desired when a new version is available. To update pymead, use

pip install pymead --upgrade

The pymead GUI can then be started from any directory by running the following command in the terminal:

pymead-gui

The API is centered primarily around the GeometryCollection class. After instantiating this class, geometric objects and parameters/design variables can be added using the methods starting with add_ (e.g., add_point()). This removes the need to instantiate each type of PymeadObj individually. In fact, the set_from_dict_rep method in the GeometryCollection class be used to load in an airfoil system saved from either the GUI or the API. Most of the main API elements are stored in pymead.core. For example, to create a geometry collection (the main container in the pymead API), and add a point at \(x=0.5\), \(y=0.3\), run the following lines in a .py script or in a Python console:

from pymead.core.geometry_collection import GeometryCollection
geo_col = GeometryCollection()
geo_col.add_point(0.5, 0.3)

Method 3: IDE (GUI + API)#

Some IDEs, like PyCharm, have a plugin for pip. In PyCharm, simply search for and install “pymead” in the “Python Packages” tab. Follow similar steps as Method 2 for accessing the GUI and the API.

Method 4: Local Install (DEV: GUI+API)#

This method is recommended for those wishing to use the latest development version of pymead or for those who desire to contribute to pymead in any capacity. The pymead package can be installed in a local location using Git. To accomplish this, clone the repository, fetch all the branches, and checkout the dev branch:

git clone https://github.com/mlau154/pymead.git
cd pymead
git fetch
git checkout dev

To pull the latest changes from the repository at some point after installation, use

git pull

Cloning and checking out a branch of the pymead repository only copies the source code into a directory. Installation after this step is still recommended because installation automatically installs all Python dependencies and makes the pymead package importable from outside the repository. To install, navigate to the top-level directory of the install location in the terminal (where the pyproject.toml file is located), then type:

pip install .

This will install pymead and all of its dependencies into the Lib/site-packages folder of the current version of Python. To check that the installation succeeded, start a Python interpreter and import the pymead library:

python
>>> import pymead

If the installation was successful, no errors will be thrown. After closing the interpreter, the pymead GUI can then be started from any directory by running the following command in the terminal (use python3 instead of py for Linux or macOS):

>>> quit()
pymead-gui

Dependencies#

Required#

Each of the following dependencies are required to use pymead. All packages listed in this section are automatically installed when using Methods 1, 2, or 3 above. If using Method 4, the line pip install . installs these dependencies.

  • scipy: Used for airfoil matching

  • numpy: Used for math, vector, and matrix computations

  • shapely: Computational geometry

  • matplotlib: Static plotting

  • requests: Downloading airfoil coordinate sets from Airfoil Tools

  • PyQt6: Graphical User Interface (GUI)

  • PyQt6-WebEngine: Internal GUI web-based help browser

  • pyqtgraph: Interactive plots

  • python-benedict: Dictionary utilities

  • pandas: Data structures

  • pymoo: Genetic algorithms used for aerodynamic shape optimization

  • numba: Speed-up of inviscid lift coefficient calculation

  • cmcrameri: Perceptually uniform, color-vision-deficiency friendly color maps by Fabio Crameri (used for flow visualization)

  • networkx: Analysis of the undirected graph describing the geometric constraint system

  • psutil: Process management

  • pytest: Unit testing

  • pytest-qt: Unit testing of the GUI components

  • PyQt6-Frameless-Window: Windows Aero Snap and other OS-specific title bar features

Optional#

pymead relies on several external libraries for low- and medium-fidelity aerodynamic analysis. All the geometry tools in pymead are built-in, apart from several Python libraries that are installed automatically if pip is used as the install method. However, parts of the analysis and optimization modules cannot be used without the separate installation of the following external libraries. To make the most of pymead, download the following software packages:

  • XFOIL: low-fidelity, single-airfoil-element aerodynamic analysis (linear-strength vortex panel code coupled with a boundary-layer model)

  • MSES: medium-fidelity, multi-airfoil-element aerodynamic analysis (Euler-equation solver coupled with the same boundary-layer model as XFOIL)

  • Ghostscript: PS-to-PDF file conversion

  • MuPDF: PDF-to-SVG file conversion

Note

The latest MuPDF release for Windows at the time of writing is 1.23.0. Go to the Releases page, scroll to “1.23.0,” and download “mupdf-1.23.0-windows.zip.”

Each of these software packages are free except for MSES. However, even MSES is free by request for academic research. It is important that for each of these programs installed, the full path to the folder containing the executable be added to the system path. Please see this blog post at medium.com for more details on how to accomplish this if you are unfamiliar. As an example, after XFOIL is downloaded from the linked web page and extracted to the same folder it was downloaded to, a path that looks like C:\Users\<user-name>\Downloads\XFOIL6.99 on Windows is the folder that should be added to the system path because it contains xfoil.exe. If the XFOIL folder is moved to a more typical folder used for storing programs, such as C:\Program Files, C:\Program Files (x86), or C:\Users\<user-name>\AppData\Local\Programs in Windows, be sure to change the path accordingly in the environmental variable or Windows will be unable to find the program when run through pymead.