A new (not only for) beginner’s tutorial on NGSolve is available.
Is was prepared by Christoph Lehrenfeld for the 2026 user-meeting.
You find it on NGSolve → Documentation → C. Lehrenfeld is taming the Beast
1 Like
Hello, complete beginner here.
First of all I’d like to say thank you for developing, maintaining and supporting NGSolve, and thank you for this tutorial which at first glance (I did not take a lot of time to go through it yet) looks quite complete, with good difficulty progression.
However, I can’t help to share my surprise when I saw illustrations I am 99% sure are at least partially AI-generated (attached screenshot).
I fully understand than this is a free and open-source project and most likely does not have any financial means to hire a graphic designer to do this job, that this tutorial already represents a massive amount of work, and I am grateful for that.
But the use of AI generated graphics bugs me, for ethical, environmental and social reasons.
Moreover, I believe these graphics add very little if anything at all to the value of the tutorial - in fact I believe it would be just better without them, and everything else staying the same.
It also raises the question - if one of the official tutorials uses generative AI, is a part of the software coded with generative AI? Do I put my trust in potentially AI-generated code?
That’s also part of the reasons I think these illustrations make the tutorial less attractive.
I hope this post doesn’t come off as aggressive - just wanted to share my opinion.
In the eventuality I am wrong, maybe crediting the artist would be a good idea then?
Hi GSting,
A few very short comments from my side:
Completely agree, some people like very short tutorials with few words and formulas only (welcome to my classes), while others prefer more story-telling in between. Everyone is warmly welcome to the community.
As most real people nowadays, NGSolve developers are exploring the possibilities of AI, and (in particular as teachers and parents) we are well aware of the dangers of misuse.
Regarding your question on how to trust simulation results: This is a fundamental question in computational science. The answer is simple: never blindly trust any code, whether written by an AI or a human. Always use your brain, study the underlying mathematics, and run rigorous validation tests.
Joachim
Hi GSting,
Welcome to the NGSolve community!
I think we have a bunch of material on NGSolve and its features. These tutorials have been an attempt to present some aspects ( note that the standard i-tutorials are certainly (much!) more complete! ) and to spicen things up a bit. The NGSolve User Meeting has always a very mixed audience (from beginners to experts) so that this story-telling part ( but not only this ) was meant to keep things a bit more interesting also for the more experienced users. I am sorry that it does not resonate with you. But, for serious users like you I added the option to turn off much of the non-sense:
Let me also add that I could spend hundreds of hours more on the tutorials (with and without the help of AI) to round them up and polish them. They are far from perfect, but I have also limited resources (and already spend too much time on them concerning my other responsibilities).
As to your AI concerns: Thank you for raising the awareness for problematic use of AI up!
Best,
Christoph