PyCharm - Unresolved reference

Question

I have installed FEniCS 1.6.0 in a Linux environment (Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTC). FEniCS itself is working properly, but i am having trouble getting my IDE (PyCharm Community Edition 5.0) running "at full speed". If i type in (MWE),

from dolfin import *
e = Expression('0.0')

everything works as expected. The Expression class is recognized; tab completion works, i can jump to the implementation and so on. However if i type in (MWE),

from dolfin import *
p = Point(0,0,0)

my IDE lights up like a Christmas tree showing the error Unresolved reference 'Point'. The code still works, but all the nice features of my IDE are gone.

Now i know that this error means that the definition of the Point class was not found; but how come that the Expression class is recognized correctly and the Point class is not? And even more importantly; how can i fix it?

Cheers,
emher

Answer 1

It turns out that for classes within the cpp part of dolfin, the parent module must be imported separately (at least in PyCharm) for syntax highlighting/autocompletion to work. Hence my MWE would take the following form

from dolfin.cpp.mesh import * 
p = Point(0, 0, 0)

since the Point class is located in the dolfin.cpp.mesh module. If classes from other cpp modules are used, these modules must be imported too.

Answer 2

Difficult to say, but it may be due to the way that SWIG handles overloading. I guess Point can take different numbers of arguments for 2D or 3D. Try with ipython or another interactive environment. For example, I have never had a problem with the TAB key autocompletion in ipython.