Installation Instructions for iso2mesh toolbox

System Requirements

iso2mesh is written in Matlab language and is compatible with GNU Octave, therefore, any system that is able to run Matlab (or Octave) should be able to use this toolbox. However, as we described in the Doc/README, this toolbox relies on multiple external tools/libraries for full functionality. So far, we have compiled these external tools for Linux (32/64bit), Mac OS (intel based or powerpc based) and Windows (95~vista, 32/64bit). If your platform is not mentioned (such as Solaris, AIX etc), please download the source code of these tools and compile them on your own machine.

The recommended system configuration for running this toolbox includes

• a computer running GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac OS (either 32bit/64bit)
• standard installation of Matlab (v7 or above) or Octave (3.0 or above) (for some demos, you need to install the image processing toolbox for maltab/octave)
• 20M disk space for the toolbox and the examples
• a folder where you have write permission

Installation

The installation of iso2mesh to your system is straightforward, simplify follow the instructions below:

• extract the toolbox to a folder, for example, /home/myaccount/work/iso2mesh, let's call it the "root directory" of iso2mesh;
• (this step is no longer needed) add the bin/ folder under the iso2mesh root directory to your system's PATH environment variable, see more details here;
• start your Maltab from a new shell (make sure the PATH setting is effective), type addpath('/home/myaccount/work/iso2mesh') to add iso2mesh to your matlab search path for the current session
• if you want to add this path permanently for Matlab, you need to type pathtool, browse to the iso2mesh folder and add it to the list, then click "Save"
• now, you can do a rehash in matlab, and type which vol2mesh, if you see an output, that means iso2mesh is now installed in Matlab
• you can navigate to a folder named "sample" inside iso2mesh's root directory, and run the demo scripts, you should be able to see the code complete with no error message. If it complains that some commands can not be found, make sure your PATH variable is set correctly.

For restricted users

You do not have to be a system administrator (or root) in order to install/use iso2mesh toolbox. Most of the installation instructions can be done on a per-user basis. The only issue a restricted user may encounter is the "permission error" when saving the "pathtool" path list in order to add iso2mesh permanently. If this happens, you may work in a multi-user or network-based system. For Matlab users, you typically need to create file named startup.m under the Matlab startup directory (~/matlab/ for Linux/Unix), and put addpath('/path/to/iso2mesh/'); into this file. It will be automatically executed when Matlab starts. For Octave, this file is .octaverc.

When using this toolbox under an extensively restricted mode, one may encounter a "fail to write" error, this may likely be caused by the default output folder is not writable from your account. If you do have another folder which you have permission to write, you need to define an variable ISO2MESH_TEMP in Matlab/Octave's "base workspace" and set the value as the writable folder path, then rer-un your meshing commands.