fem solve versus fem solve restart

MARCH8

In MARCH8.f you will see that

'fem solve to 0'

(a commonly used fem command), sets up the appropriate data structures for future solves AND takes one time step. Note that some people may believe that

'fem solve to 0'

just sets up structures without doing one solve.

Often people do a 'fem solve to 0' followed by a 'fem solve restart to 0'. What happens in the 'fem solve restart to 0' is that another time step is taken so that afterwards we are at time T=2*dt. It would probably make more sense to follow 'fem solve to 0' with 'fem solve to 1'.

On the other hand you could start by saying 'fem solve to 1' and then future calls would be 'fem solve restart to 2', for example.