From SOFAWiki

Customizing SOFA

You can customize SOFA to use various external libraries, plugins, viewers, compilers, etc.

• Copy file sofa-default.prf (or sofa-default.cfg) to sofa-local.prf (or sofa-local.cfg, respectively). You need to do this only once.
• Edit this file. Typical customizations are discussed below.
• Compile. This will compile and link the additional modules. You do not need to recompile what is already compiled. You may have to force the re-generation of solution files, or to delete the Makefiles to force their update, however.

Use QGLViewer

QGLViewer is more advanced than the basic viewer. It is included in the SOFA distribution, but it is not activated by default.To activate it:

• uncomment DEFINES += SOFA_GUI_QGLVIEWER in sofa-local.prf
• at runtime, in the SOFA GUI, check QGLViewer in the View menu

Use CUDA gpgpu accelerations

• uncomment DEFINES += SOFA_GPU_CUDA in sofa-local.prf
• read the instructions in sofa-local.prf to tune your Cuda settings