Alpaca4d

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Send a model to FEM-Design ​

Write an Alpaca4d model to a .struxml file that StruSoft's FEM-Design opens, to design it there: its bars, plates and walls, supports, load cases and masses.

Alpaca4DToFEM-Design component

You need ​

Steps ​

  1. Place Alpaca4DToFEM-Design, in Alpaca4d ▸ 06_Assemble, and wire the model into AlpacaModel.
  2. Set Country to the national annex whose material library the materials are looked up in: common, the Eurocode's recommended values, to start with, or S, N, DK, FIN, H or LV. The countries' names work too.
  3. Read Report before saving. The model is converted and the report shown, but nothing is written yet.
  4. Give FilePath, or leave it empty to write the file next to the Grasshopper definition, with its name. That needs the definition saved.
  5. Set Save to true.
  6. Open the file in FEM-Design. Set the load cases' types and durations, and the combinations you need, there.

Check ​

  • FilePath gives the file written, once Save is true. Saving checks the file against FEM-Design's schema, and anything that fails is an error.
  • LoadCases lists FEM-Design's load cases: one per load pattern with loads, in order, then the self-weight.
  • In FEM-Design, a linear analysis of the combination Alpaca, which adds every load case with its factor, is the analysis Alpaca4d runs. Compare the two.

Good to know ​

  • The Report has errors first: what is left out and changes the structure or its loads, such as bricks and tetrahedra, which are not exported. Warnings are approximations, remarks things worth knowing.
  • Grades from the Material Database and profiles from the Steel Section Library become FEM-Design's own, which it can design with. Any other material is analysed but not designed.
  • A beam's ElementId becomes its name in FEM-Design, numbered: Column.1, Column.2...
  • The export goes one way: FEM-Design's results do not come back. The file can be written on Rhino for Mac too, and opened in FEM-Design on Windows afterwards.

See also ​