This section explains a new way to expand GiD capabilities: the plug-in mechanism. Plug-ins which should be used by GiD shoud be present inside the $GID/plugins directory.
There are two possible plugin mechanisms:
- the Tcl way and
- the dynamic library way.
By GiD version 10.1.2d following plug-ins are provided:
- $GID/Import/pre/Amelet - Tcl's preprocess import plug-ins for models in Amelet format.
- $GID/Import/pre/UNV - Tcl's preprocess import plug-ins for models in UNV format.
- $GID/Import/obj_src - Dynamic library sources and projects to import objects using the Wavefront object format ( .obj) into postprocess. Imports mesh and normals ( as vector result) into GiD.
- $GID/Import/off_gid_import - Dynamic library sources and projects to import objects using the Object file format ( .off) into postprocess. Imports mesh and colour information ( as result) into GiD. Pentagons and hexagons are triangulated and other n-agons are discarted.
- $GID/Import/ply_gid_import - Dynamic library sources and projects to import objects using the Polygon file format ( .ply) into postprocess. Imports mesh ( lines, triangles and quadrilateras), normals and other properties ( as results) into GiD.
- $GID/Import/ply_gid_tcl_import - Dynamic library sources and projects to import objects using the Polygon file format ( .ply) into postprocess, like the previous plug-in but displaying a Tcl/Tk progressbar showing the progress of the importation process.
Look into $GID/plugins/Import/Docs for the plug-in development manual in Adobe's PDF format or in HTML format. This manual describes the dynamic library plug-in mechanism to import objects and results into GiD's postprocess.