# Introduction

SfePy (http://sfepy.org) is a software for solving systems of coupled partial differential equations (PDEs) by the finite element method in 1D, 2D and 3D. It can be viewed both as black-box PDE solver, and as a Python package which can be used for building custom applications. The word “simple” means that complex FEM problems can be coded very easily and rapidly.

There is also a preliminary support for the isogeometric analysis, outlined in Isogeometric Analysis.

The code is written almost entirely in Python, with exception of the most time demanding routines - those are written in C and wrapped by Cython or written directly in Cython.

SfePy is a free software released under the New BSD License. It relies on NumPy and SciPy (an excellent collection of tools for scientific computations in Python). It is a multi-platform software that should work on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

SfePy was originally developed as a flexible framework to quickly implement and test the mathematical models developed during our various research projects. It has evolved, however, to a rather full-featured (yet small) finite element code. Many terms have been implemented that can be used to build the PDEs, see Term Overview. SfePy comes also with a number of examples that can get you started, check Examples, gallery-index and Tutorial. Some more advanced features are discussed in Primer.