The GUI mainly serves the following purposes:
Unlike with most other geometrical modelers, in pyFormex you usually design a geometrical model by writing a small script with the mathematical expressions needed to generate it. Any text editor will be suitable for this purpose. The main author of pyFormex uses GNU Emacs, but this is just a personal preference. Any modern text editor will be fine, and the one you are accustomed with, will probably be the best choice. Since Python is the language used in pyFormex scripts, a Python aware editor is highly preferable. It will highlight the syntax and help you with proper alignment (which is very important in Python). The default editors of KDE and Gnome and most other modern editors will certainly do well. A special purpose editor integrated into the pyFormex GUI is on our TODO list, but it certainly is not our top priority, because general purpose editors are already adequate for our purposes.
Learning how to use pyFormex is best done by studying and changing some of the examples. We suggest that you first take a look at the examples included in the pyFormex GUI and select those that display geometrical structures and/or use features that look interesting to you. Then you can study the source code of those examples and see how the structures got built and how the features were obtained. Depending on your installation and configuration, the examples can be found under the Examples or Scripts main menu item. The examples may appear classified according to themes or keywords, which can help you in selecting appropriate examples.
Selecting an example from the menu will normally execute the script, possibly ask for some interactive input and display the resulting geometrical structure. To see the source of the script, choose the File > Edit Script menu item.
Before starting to write your own scripts, you should probably get acquainted with the basic data structures and instructions of Python, NumPy and pyFormex.