Numbering and topology

Hello everyone! I have a few (basic?) questions to which I hope you may have the answers.

For my master's thesis I'm using GH to design structural designs. One goal is to export the geometry, along with some loads (all determined in GH) to Oasys GSA, using the .csv (comma separated value) format. I've decided to use the 'stream contents' option from the <panel> component to do this. I chose this type of format because it is easily imported in GSA, and I should be able to get the panel to display what I want, if I know how to solve the next questions.

My questions are (see figure)

Is it possible to display the line topology, i.e. 'line form pt1 to pt2' instead of displaying line length?
I know a <point> component contains values for a location {x,y,z}. But can I display some sort of <point> numbering? Does GH assign a 'point number' to identify different points at all? Or is there some way to manually do this?
Can I set the panel to display a comma instead of a point to indicate the decimal mark?

Any help will be very much appreciated!

Attachments:

topology question.jpg, 43 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by castroecosta on September 26, 2011 at 6:49am

Hi Michael,

maybe these can help you:

1. "Is it possible to display the line topology, i.e. 'line form pt1 to pt2' instead of displaying line length?"

You can use the [End Points] component (Curve > Analysis) to access pt1 and pt2.

2. "I know a <point> component contains values for a location {x,y,z}. But can I display some sort of <point>numbering? Does GH assign a 'point number' to identify different points at all? Or is there some way to manually do this?"

[Point] parameter component stores points in a list, so this means that you can access each item individually by invoking its index (Sets > List > List Item), so you have your numbering problem solved.

3. "Can I set the panel to display a comma instead of a point to indicate the decimal mark?"

I suppose you can only solve this one via scripting. However I think when you import CSV (at least in excel) you can set what is the decimal point and what is the field separator...

Hope it helps. Best,

Eduardo

Permalink Reply by Giulio Piacentino on September 26, 2011 at 7:06am

Hi Michael,

can you send a sample of the format of the file that you want to write?

I might have some suggestions, then.

Thanks,

- Giulio
_______________
giulio@mcneel.com
McNeel Europe

Permalink Reply by Sridevi Koonath on September 26, 2011 at 7:25am

Hi Michael,

I haven't tried it out myself yet, but I think you can use Smart Structural Interpreter of Geometry Gym to exchange data between Rhino/Grasshopper and GSA.

Good luck with your thesis!

Regards,

Sridevi

Permalink Reply by Joshua Seskis on September 26, 2011 at 7:50am

Talk to Jon from Geomgym, I am pretty sure he has an integrated solver for OASYS.

Also depending on the solver you can just bake them as a DXF, I know Space Gass doesn't mind those.

Permalink Reply by Michael van Telgen on September 26, 2011 at 8:27am

First of all, thank you for your quick responses!

Judging from some responses I'm not exactly sure whether I explain what I mean correctly. I'm just not sure how I should explain, but perhaps what i mean will be made clear from the GH file I am working on (see attached file). The relevant stuff to this discussion is on the bottom right.

I may not be possible in GH, but what i really want to do is assigning a name or number to a line (this is what I mean by 'line topology'. Actually, I would like to do this for points too :)

I started to wonder this afternoon if this is really the best way to import data from GH to GSA. Perhaps I should look for another solution altogether.

One such solution may to to bake the design in Rhino and exporting it to GSA as a .dwg (autocad) file. Unfortunately, I want to add data such as loads too. this data is also generated in Grasshopper.

I'll be sure to check out Smart Structural Interpreter. I'll post my findings when I have them here.

Maybe I should get into scripting as well? In your opinion, could doing that provide a solution to this problem?

Again, thank you so much for helping me!

Attachments:

topkabel hoeken 8.ghx, 1.1 MB

Permalink Reply by castroecosta on September 26, 2011 at 8:59am

Chances are you WILL need scripting, but nevertheless you can try and do it only using existing GH components.

About the comma/point, try this (attached file)

Attachments:

help Michael.gh, 3 KB

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on September 26, 2011 at 10:26am

If you want to save yourself the process of scripting all this, you can download and use my GSA connector plugin. Installation instructions are here:

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/group/geometrygym/forum/topics/install...

Install StructDrawRhino in addition to GSA connector. I have my own bake components that send the data to GSA (best to have the application started with opening dialog closed else it starts as a background process). You can control node and element numbering with a lowest acceptable if you need to do so.

You can also automatically solve a model and extract results back to GH. Examples are found at http://geometrygym.blogspot.com

I'm happy to help further as needed,

Jon

Attachments: