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Installing SOFA under Windows

To install SOFA under Windows, you can download either the pre-compiled binary version or the source distribution.

Binary distribution

Simply unzip the archive and start runSofa.exe in the bin directory. If it fails with a DLL error it is probably because you don't have Visual C++ 2005 SP1 installed. You can get the necessary DLL here.


If you have the CUDA SDK installed and a G80 GPU (such as a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX or 8600GT), you can start sofaCUDA.exe to test GPGPU examples. You can then open the other scenes in the scenes directory with the File/Open menu. Alternatively you can tell windows to start runSofa.exe when you double-click on .scn files.

Source distribution

  • Download the SOFA framework, modules and applications archives, as well as the win32 dependencies archive
  • Create a directory where you want to install SOFA
  • Unzip all archive in this directory. You should have the following subdirectories: 
    sofa (your root SOFA directory)
  applications
  bin
  extlibs
  framework
  include
  lib
  modules
  scenes
  share
  tools
  • If you are using Visual C++ .NET / Visual C++ 2003, start project VC7.bat
  • If you are using Visual C++ 2005, start project VC8.bat
  • Build all projects

If the compilation was successful, it should have created a runSofa.exe in the bin directory (or runSofad.exe if you compiled the Debug version).

Select runSofa as start project in the solution explorer. Alternatively you can tell windows to start runSofa.exe when you double-click on .scn files.

Once the program runs, you can open other examples in the scenes directory with the File/Open menu.


Installing SOFA under Linux

Source distribution

  • Download the SOFA framework, modules and applications archives, as well as the win32 dependencies archive
  • Create a directory where you want to install SOFA
  • Unzip all archive in this directory. You can use the following commands (change the archive version for newer releases): 
    mkdir sofa
cd sofa
unzip ../sofa-framework-1.0-beta2.zip
unzip ../sofa-modules-1.0-beta2.zip
unzip ../sofa-applications-1.0-beta2.zip
unzip ../dependencies-linux.zip
  • You should have the following subdirectories: 
    sofa (your root SOFA directory)
  applications
  bin
  extlibs
  framework
  include
  lib
  modules
  scenes
  share
  • Compile SOFA, either by using the provided kdevelop project or using the following commands: 
    qmake
make
  • Add the SOFA bin and lib/linux directory in your PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variables (you can use the provided config.sh script)

If the compilation was successful, it should have created a runSofa binary in the bin directory (or runSofad if you compiled the Debug version).

You can start it directly or adding as argument a .scn example file from the scenes directory.

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