New GH Plugin, Egret (Structural Analysis)

I've been developing a new plugin for Grasshopper that can directly solve Structural Analysis models. The first alpha release can be downloaded to test, http://www.geometrygym.com/downloads

To get started, install/update StructDrawRhino (link above) and Egret. At present Egret is only a GH plugin, so run the rhino command sdrZZLicenseRequest

You can download the sample model from here

It's still very early days, lots of testing and improvements to make, but it is already capable of producing useful results. This is not intended to be a substitution for a commercial solver. It is intended that accessing a solver and results directly will be faster for linear static analysis conducted from a solver such as Galapagos.

Present testing of Galapagos is underway, GH0.8.0010 had a change made that prevents access to the result and GH0.8.0009 starts but falters. I will contact David after his holiday (in a week or so) to resolve this.

I do intend to add more attributes including finite elements, end releases, more extensive loading and more extensive result extraction. If you suggestions or requests, let me know and I will make a priority.

Please carefully test and validate any results prior to acceptance. Report any identified issues and I will address them ASAP.

Hope you find it useful,

Jon

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Andrew Heumann on May 13, 2011 at 3:31am

this is awesome! great work!

Permalink Reply by Robert Vier on May 13, 2011 at 4:05am

Hey Jon,

I would like to test Egret - do I have to request another license from you or is there a demo mode?

Best,

Robert

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on May 13, 2011 at 4:27am

Hi Robert,

I'm interested to see who wants to test and apply these tools, so there isn't a demo mode at the moment. I'll send you an email in a moment with the license extended for egret.

Cheers, Jon

Permalink Reply by Aaron Coffman on May 13, 2011 at 6:54am

definitely going to try this one out! cheers for all the hard work you do to supply us with some new fun components

Permalink Reply by Arend on May 14, 2011 at 2:40pm

Hi Jon,

Thanks for the great work. It seems to work quite nice, I'll try to validate the results later on.

Attached is a file which is less spagetthi like, I added some comments for those interested and a vb.net component to show the deformed structure based on the deflection vectors. (not as sophisticated as most CAD programs do, but it seems to work).

Cheers,

Arend

Attachments:

110509 egret truss+documentation+deformation.gh, 94 KB
capture.jpg, 73 KB
definition.png, 1 MB

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on May 15, 2011 at 12:32pm

Hi Arend,

Thanks for sharing a tidied up version, well done to you.

Certainly an automatic deformation model (including element end rotations) is something I am intending to add, but nice to show a viable option.

Cheers, Jon

Permalink Reply by Robert Vier on May 28, 2011 at 3:52am

Hey Jon,

after I installed the latest version of structDrawRhino and successfully licensed it (thanks again) i installed egret.

structDraw works fine, but somehow grasshopper fails to load egret:

I tried to switch my decimal separator from ',' to '.' but doesn't help. Grasshopper doesn't load the Egret components.

I am working on

Windows 7 64

Rhino 4 SR8

Grasshopper 0.8.0010

Any advice?

thank you

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on May 28, 2011 at 4:55am

Hi Robert, I'll contact you directly on this, I'll give you some diagnostic builds to troubleshoot if you don't mind.

Cheers,

Jon

Permalink Reply by Lina Marcela Quintero on August 18, 2011 at 3:34pm

Hi Jon, I have the same problem as Robert.

Would you mind giving me some help?

Thanks.

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on August 18, 2011 at 10:17pm

Hi Lina,

David and I have been looking at how to resolve this issue but had success yet.

The one way to fix this problem is run the rhino command GrasshopperDeveloperSettings and untick COFF loading. Restart Rhino and Egret should load. Also as per your email, refer the post below for an example of interaction between Galapagos and Egret.

Cheers,

Jon

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on August 7, 2011 at 1:12pm

Ok, Thanks a lot to David for devoting considerable time to testing and improving galapagos. It is now acknowledging GeomGym solver results, and with faster response than seen previously.

Attached is the test model if you wish to test with Egret yourself.

Cheers,

Jon

Attachments: