Notes on "The Surface Evolver" by Ken Brakke 

Energies:
surface tension
gravitational
squared mean curvature
user-defined surface integrals

Capabilities:
complicated topology
1- or 2- manifolds
embedded in R3 or higher
arbitrary Riemannian metric
volume constraints 
boundary constraints
boundary contact angles
prescribed mean curvature
crystalline integrands
gravity
constraints expressed as surface integrals

Surface Operations:
Refining: = subdividing triangles into 4
Equiangulation: = edge swap in quad fromed by 2 adjacent triangles
Vertex Averaging: = new position as area-weighted average of centroids of neighbor facets
Notching Edges:= put notch in edge to make it more saddle shaped
"Clean-up": eliminate very short edges, triangles too small, bisect long edges (and adjacent faces).
Annealing, Jiggling: = random perturbation of vertices to get out of saddle points
Popping: = change topology by removing improper singularities
Zooming: = remove surface except around particular area of interest