9.1 MSH ASCII file format

The MSH ASCII file format contains one mandatory section giving information about the file ($MeshFormat), followed by several optional sections defining the nodes ($Nodes), elements ($Elements), region names ($PhysicalName), periodicity relations ($Periodic) and post-processing datasets ($NodeData, $ElementData, $ElementNodeData).

When $Elements are given, $Nodes should also be provided, before the $Elements section. Currently only one $Nodes and one $Elements section are allowed per file. (This might/will change in the future.)

Important note about efficiency. Node and element tags can be "sparse", i.e., do not have to constitute a continuous list of indexes starting at 1. However, using non-continuous tags will lead to performance degradation. For meshes, non-continuous indexing forces Gmsh to use a map instead of a vector to access nodes and elements. The performance hit is on speed. For post-processing datasets, which always use vectors to access data, the performance hit is on memory. A NodeData with two nodes, tagged 1 and 1000000, will allocate a (mostly empty) vector of 1000000 elements.

Any section with an unrecognized header is simply ignored: you can thus add comments in a ‘.msh’ file by putting them e.g. inside a $Comments/$EndComments section.

Sections can be repeated in the same file, and post-processing sections can be put into separate files (e.g. one file per time step). Nodes are assumed to be defined before elements.

The format is defined as follows:

$MeshFormat
version-number file-type data-size
$EndMeshFormat
$Nodes
number-of-nodes
node-number x-coord y-coord z-coord
…
$EndNodes
$Elements
number-of-elements
elm-number elm-type number-of-tags < tag > … node-number-list
…
$EndElements
$Periodic
number-of-periodic-entities
dimension slave-entity-tag master-entity-tag
number-of-nodes
slave-node-number master-node-number
…
$EndPeriodic
$PhysicalNames
number-of-names
physical-dimension physical-number "physical-name"
…
$EndPhysicalNames
$NodeData
number-of-string-tags
< "string-tag" >
…
number-of-real-tags
< real-tag >
…
number-of-integer-tags
< integer-tag >
…
node-number value …
…
$EndNodeData
$ElementData
number-of-string-tags
< "string-tag" >
…
number-of-real-tags
< real-tag >
…
number-of-integer-tags
< integer-tag >
…
elm-number value …
…
$EndElementData
$ElementNodeData
number-of-string-tags
< "string-tag" >
…
number-of-real-tags
< real-tag >
…
number-of-integer-tags
< integer-tag >
…
elm-number number-of-nodes-per-element value …
…
$EndElementNodeData
$InterpolationScheme
"name"
number-of-element-topologies
elm-topology
number-of-interpolation-matrices
num-rows num-columns value …
…
$EndInterpolationScheme

where

version-number

is a real number equal to 2.2

file-type

is an integer equal to 0 in the ASCII file format.

data-size

is an integer equal to the size of the floating point numbers used in the file (currently only data-size = sizeof(double) is supported).

number-of-nodes

is the number of nodes in the mesh.

node-number

is the number (index) of the n-th node in the mesh; node-number must be a postive (non-zero) integer. Note that the node-numbers do not necessarily have to form a dense nor an ordered sequence.

x-coord y-coord z-coord

are the floating point values giving the X, Y and Z coordinates of the n-th node.

number-of-elements

is the number of elements in the mesh.

elm-number

is the number (index) of the n-th element in the mesh; elm-number must be a postive (non-zero) integer. Note that the elm-numbers do not necessarily have to form a dense nor an ordered sequence.

elm-type

defines the geometrical type of the n-th element:

1

2-node line.

2

3-node triangle.

3

4-node quadrangle.

4

4-node tetrahedron.

5

8-node hexahedron.

6

6-node prism.

7

5-node pyramid.

8

3-node second order line (2 nodes associated with the vertices and 1 with the edge).

9

6-node second order triangle (3 nodes associated with the vertices and 3 with the edges).

10

9-node second order quadrangle (4 nodes associated with the vertices, 4 with the edges and 1 with the face).

11

10-node second order tetrahedron (4 nodes associated with the vertices and 6 with the edges).

12

27-node second order hexahedron (8 nodes associated with the vertices, 12 with the edges, 6 with the faces and 1 with the volume).

13

18-node second order prism (6 nodes associated with the vertices, 9 with the edges and 3 with the quadrangular faces).

14

14-node second order pyramid (5 nodes associated with the vertices, 8 with the edges and 1 with the quadrangular face).

15

1-node point.

16

8-node second order quadrangle (4 nodes associated with the vertices and 4 with the edges).

17

20-node second order hexahedron (8 nodes associated with the vertices and 12 with the edges).

18

15-node second order prism (6 nodes associated with the vertices and 9 with the edges).

19

13-node second order pyramid (5 nodes associated with the vertices and 8 with the edges).

20

9-node third order incomplete triangle (3 nodes associated with the vertices, 6 with the edges)

21

10-node third order triangle (3 nodes associated with the vertices, 6 with the edges, 1 with the face)

22

12-node fourth order incomplete triangle (3 nodes associated with the vertices, 9 with the edges)

23

15-node fourth order triangle (3 nodes associated with the vertices, 9 with the edges, 3 with the face)

24

15-node fifth order incomplete triangle (3 nodes associated with the vertices, 12 with the edges)

25

21-node fifth order complete triangle (3 nodes associated with the vertices, 12 with the edges, 6 with the face)

26

4-node third order edge (2 nodes associated with the vertices, 2 internal to the edge)

27

5-node fourth order edge (2 nodes associated with the vertices, 3 internal to the edge)

28

6-node fifth order edge (2 nodes associated with the vertices, 4 internal to the edge)

29

20-node third order tetrahedron (4 nodes associated with the vertices, 12 with the edges, 4 with the faces)

30

35-node fourth order tetrahedron (4 nodes associated with the vertices, 18 with the edges, 12 with the faces, 1 in the volume)

31

56-node fifth order tetrahedron (4 nodes associated with the vertices, 24 with the edges, 24 with the faces, 4 in the volume)

92

64-node third order hexahedron (8 nodes associated with the vertices, 24 with the edges, 24 with the faces, 8 in the volume)

93

125-node fourth order hexahedron (8 nodes associated with the vertices, 36 with the edges, 54 with the faces, 27 in the volume)

See below for the ordering of the nodes.

number-of-tags

gives the number of integer tags that follow for the n-th element. By default, the first tag is the number of the physical entity to which the element belongs; the second is the number of the elementary geometrical entity to which the element belongs; the third is the number of mesh partitions to which the element belongs, followed by the partition ids (negative partition ids indicate ghost cells). A zero tag is equivalent to no tag. Gmsh and most codes using the MSH 2 format require at least the first two tags (physical and elementary tags).

node-number-list

is the list of the node numbers of the n-th element. The ordering of the nodes is given in Node ordering.

number-of-string-tags

gives the number of string tags that follow. By default the first string-tag is interpreted as the name of the post-processing view and the second as the name of the interpolation scheme. The interpolation scheme is provided in the $InterpolationScheme section (see below).

number-of-real-tags

gives the number of real number tags that follow. By default the first real-tag is interpreted as a time value associated with the dataset.

number-of-integer-tags

gives the number of integer tags that follow. By default the first integer-tag is interpreted as a time step index (starting at 0), the second as the number of field components of the data in the view (1, 3 or 9), the third as the number of entities (nodes or elements) in the view, and the fourth as the partition index for the view data (0 for no partition).

number-of-nodes-per-elements

gives the number of node values for an element in an element-based view.

value

is a real number giving the value associated with a node or an element. For NodeData (respectively ElementData) views, there are ncomp values per node (resp. per element), where ncomp is the number of field components. For ElementNodeData views, there are ncomp times number-of-nodes-per-elements values per element.

number-of-element-topologies

is the number of element topologies for which interpolation matrices are provided

elm-topology

is the id tag of a given element topology: 1 for points, 2 for lines, 3 for triangles, 4 for quadrangles, 5 for tetrahedra, 6 for pyramids, 7 for prisms, 8 for hexahedra, 9 for polygons and 10 for polyhedra.

number-of-interpolation-matrices

is the number of interpolation matrices provided for this element topology. Currently you should provide 2 matrices, i.e., the matrices that specify how to interpolate the data (they have the same meaning as in Post-processing commands). The matrices are specified by 2 integers (num-rows and num-columns) followed by the values.

Below is a small example (a mesh consisting of two quadrangles with an associated nodal scalar dataset; the comments are not part of the actual file!):

$MeshFormat
2.2 0 8
$EndMeshFormat
$Nodes
6                      six mesh nodes:
1 0.0 0.0 0.0            node #1: coordinates (0.0, 0.0, 0.0)
2 1.0 0.0 0.0            node #2: coordinates (1.0, 0.0, 0.0)
3 1.0 1.0 0.0            etc.
4 0.0 1.0 0.0
5 2.0 0.0 0.0
6 2.0 1.0 0.0
$EndNodes
$Elements
2                      two elements:
1 3 2 99 2 1 2 3 4       quad #1: type 3, physical 99, elementary 2, nodes 1 2 3 4
2 3 2 99 2 2 5 6 3       quad #2: type 3, physical 99, elementary 2, nodes 2 5 6 3
$EndElements 
$NodeData
1                      one string tag:
"A scalar view"          the name of the view ("A scalar view")
1                      one real tag:
0.0                      the time value (0.0)
3                      three integer tags:
0                        the time step (0; time steps always start at 0)
1                        1-component (scalar) field
6                        six associated nodal values
1 0.0                  value associated with node #1 (0.0)
2 0.1                  value associated with node #2 (0.1)
3 0.2                  etc.
4 0.0
5 0.2
6 0.4
$EndNodeData 

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