The FLAC3D, PFC, and 3DEC computational and plotting engines have been designed as plugins to a common graphical user interface and cycling system. PFC and 3DEC are always automatically loaded on FLAC3D 7 startup. This architecture means that all three may be simultaneously cycled, allowing finite-volume continuum and discrete element model components to exist at the same time within one instance of FLAC3D. For coupled models, a valid license for each of the coupled components (any combination of FLAC3D, PFC, and 3DEC) is required. Any of the components may be run in demo-mode, which limits some functionality and the number of zones, balls, blocks, etc. that may be included in a model. Visibility of the other programs' components may be controlled through FLAC3D program options.
Please note that the PFC 7 and 3DEC 7 plug-ins distributed with FLAC3D 7 are Alpha versions (i.e., they have not been fully tested, their documentation is incomplete, and their new feature sets have not been finalized). However, as those programs approach release, FLAC3D 7 updates will contain updates to them as well. On release, the latest version of FLAC3D will also contain the release versions of those codes. We encourage you experiment with this new functionality, but use of Alpha versions is not recommended for engineering design or scientific research.
