Mesh Component Design and Software Integration withinSUMAA 3 d

The requirements of distributed-memory applications that use mesh management software tools are diverse, and building software that meets these requirements represents a considerable challenge. In this paper we discuss design requirements for a general, component approach for mesh management for use within the context of solving PDE applications on parallel computers. We describe recent efforts with the SUMAA3d package motivated by a component-based approach and show how these efforts have considerably improved both the flexibility and the usability of this software.