[Gmsh] importing/merging geometries

[Bart Vandewoestyne]

Hello list,

Up until now, I have been working with simple, quite academic 2D
geometries that I could easily 'program' as a .geo file.

As I will switch to 3D in the near future and my geometries might
become more complex and less academic, I think I will have to
leave gmsh for creating my geometries...  For complex 3D solid
modeling or CAD, I have the impression that gmsh is rather
limited (please correct me if I'm wrong) and I will probably need
to switch to a more dedicated 3D solid modeling or CAD tool that
has a nice and intuitive GUI and which allows me to create my 3D
geometries interactively.

Let's call '3D-tool' the external tool that I will use for my 3D
solid modeling, then I have two questions:

1) What file format should my 3D-tool be able to export to?  What
is the best file format to use for maximum compatibility and ease
of use in gmsh? (I prefer open file formats... so if there is one
to recommend here, I would be happy to hear).

2) Knowing that I am only interested in Open Source software that
runs on both Linux and Windows, what would probably be the best
3D solid modeling / CAD tool to use?  My first google searches
resulted in BRL-CAD, FreeCAD and Open CASCADE

  http://brlcad.org/
  http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Main_Page
  http://www.opencascade.org/

Is any of these three preferable in combination with gmsh?  Or are
there even other better programs?

Kind regards,
Bart

-- 
	"Share what you know.  Learn what you don't."