Fortran to Python Interface Generator with an Application to Aerospace Engineering

FPIG — Fortran to Python Interface Generator — is a tool for generating Python C/API extension modules that interface Fortran 77/90/95 codes with Python. This tool automates the process of interface generation by scanning the Fortran source code to determine the signatures of Fortran routines and creating a Python C/API module that contains the corresponding interface functions. FPIG also attempts to find dependence relations between the arguments of a Fortran routine call (e.g. an array and its dimensions) and constructs interface functions with potentially fewer arguments. The tool is extremely flexible since the user has control over the generation process of the interface by specifying the desired function signatures. The home page for FPIG can be found at http://cens.ioc.ee/projects/f2py2e/. FPIG has been used successfully to wrap a large number of Fortran programs and libraries. Advances in computational science have led to large improvements in the modeling of physical systems which are often a result of the coupling of a variety of physical models that were typically run in isolation. Since a majority of the available physical models have been previously written in Fortran, the importance of FPIG in accomplishing these couplings cannot be understated. In this paper, we present an application of FPIG to create an object-oriented framework for aero-structural analysis and design of aircraft.