Grasshopper/Kangaroo > GeometryGym > GSA

Hi Jon,

At first, thank you for your development in export between grasshopper and analysis software.

I am currently working on my graduation thesis, but ran in to a problem.

I made a model in grasshopper, with Kangaroo for the form-finding process.

The shape found with Kangaroo should be exported to GSA, (combined with material properties and some loads).

This process goes quite well, but it exports almost 10.000 nodes while i only have approximately 120 nodes i the model.

As shown in the picture it exports each node during each iteration in the form-finding process, but I am only interested in the final geometry.

How can I extract these nodes?

Thank you in advance!!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on June 3, 2016 at 12:56am

Hi Sebastien,

You could try using the 'zombie' Kangaroo component instead of the regular solver component.
This outputs only the converged equilibrium solution, without displaying any intermediate results.

Permalink Reply by Sebastien de Wit on June 3, 2016 at 2:42am

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the quick reaction! I immediately tried to change the grasshopper model as you mentioned above.

The first run results in the first image which is exactly as it should be.

The next step, especially with parametric models, is to make a change. I changed the direction of the force to a negative value, resulting in the second image. Again it shows nodes from the previous solution, even after I cleared the ZombieKangaroo module.

What am I doing wrong?

Image 1:

Image 2:

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on June 3, 2016 at 6:58am

At Shape to Fabrication in April, Daniel and I did have a quick discussion about an exporter from Kanagroo to the Structural Analysis model view definition of IFC (Which would then permit transferring the model to structural analysis software that support IFC or the applications that I have developed interfaces to).

It's a matter of time to do this, but perhaps this could be a good test case. If you can share your definition Sebastien (you can email it if you don't want to post here), I'll take a look at this

Permalink Reply by Andrew Mole on June 4, 2016 at 8:13pm

Hi Sebastian,

It looks as though you are spurring on a good development. However, from a practical perspective, is it possible to send the results into a different layer each time? This way you could pick any iteration that you are interested in.

Andrew

Permalink Reply by Sebastien de Wit on June 8, 2016 at 7:10am

Hi Jon and Andrew,

I asked some guys at the university if they could help me. They said they had some kind of similar problem.

They used a DataDam module in Grasshopper. Actually this works quite well.

The only problem that remains is the following. Assume Kangaroo does a simulation (not in zombie mode) is ends up with a geometry when the kinematic energy is 0.

Then I open the DataDam and its sends 121 nodes to GSA.

The next step is to reverse the force to a negative value and restart the Kangaroo module after the kinetic energy is 0 again I open the DataDam once more.

Now its send 235 nodes to GSA. Which is the new model as well as the old model.

I would like to clear the cache after a simulation before the next simulation in order to fix this problem. Is this possible. I added my file as well.

Thanks in advance!!

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