Hi Everyone,
Are you a structural engineer or know a structural engineer who’s been waiting for that CSI connector to ETABS? If so have I got news for you, I’m currently working on an ETABS connector so if you have any structural models (ETABSv18 as of now) that are available for sharing and testing purposes, it would be greatly appreciated if you could share them with us.
Regards,
Reynold
In addition to structural models, if you have any way you envision speckle being used in a structural context i.e building a structural model from grasshopper or drawing lines in rhino to rebuild in ETABS or maybe converting from one structural model to another. Please let me know and post it here as well !
Ping to those who expressed interest in structural stuff in the past (hope you don’t mind it!):
@jenessa.man @mike.kovacs @kelvin @tlmn @smz @AlBal2 @mikegat
Hi @Reynold_Chan,
I’m very interested to see how the Speckle Structural Object Model will look like and how it will interact with the BuiltElements model for interoperability with BIM. I’ve been using the definitions of @jenessa.man to do some first tests for a connector with SCIA Engineer. Happy to discuss!
Kelvin
Hi! No problem at all, I’ve scribbled a few thoughts below… You probably know how sketchy a lot of engineering programs can be for drawing in so being able to stream geometry in from Rhino, Revit or Grasshopper would be the dream. More of the job now is about trying different options, so being able to branch for different variations while still having a main branch for the base option is a really neat way to organise the project. For a lot of projects we tend to use the analysis model to get loads on different members then take a dive into designing those separately from the analysis model using spreadsheets or our own in-house scripts and software (just because the design modules in analysis software are never quite right for what you want to do or clunky as hell). Being able to stream out results that can be interpreted for design would be awesome.
It is possible to access the E-tabs API and implement it. If you want to send an Analytical Model from Revit use Rhino Inside to extract the model to grasshopper and then you can use Geometry Gym Plugin for Grasshopper to send the model to E-tabs.
I am studying the E-Tabs API , I am really interested to contribute to develop a connector. I need your help @teocomi @Reynold_Chan
Yes ! how are you finding those elements? We’ve just pulled Jenessa’s branch into our main so they’re there to use and play with.
Sounds awesome, how do you imagine these formats of these results to be most useful? Spreadsheets for days? Or being able to visualize the results inside Rhino as well ? not sure if the latter is too useful since all structural programs have their innate visualization.
It would be awesome if everyone could tap up API calls to get the results data that they need to play with it but in practicality spreadsheets for days might be more likely…
Hi Tejas, yes I’m currently working on developing the ETABS connector. We already have a branch on the repo in speckle sharp. GitHub - specklesystems/speckle-sharp at structural/ETABS Check this out. If you have any ideas on what you envision it to do in particular to help you in your workflows let me know !
Hi @Reynold_Chan,
So far they are working out alright, though I have only been using some of the basic elements. I’m more used to the SAF model, but the required info seems to be there.
Two small comments that I already shared with Jenessa as well:
Curious to see what will be made of it!
Kelvin
Hello structural peeps !
it is finally here! Come check out the ETABS connector in alpha stage. Play around and let me know what works and doesn’t work. You can install it through the manager like our other connectors.
Thanks to @smz for the initial bindings in the connector and @dtnaughton for their contributions.
faster visualization is always better given baked (or exported) data.
I like to run and re run models as much as I can but also just visualizing sets of “spreadsheets for days” in rhino would be nice.
I’ve been perplexed these days in terms of how “spreadsheets for days” in rhino would look like that wouldn’t just end up being a fancy viewer of the ETABS viewer itself ? Any examples of any sets of data you would like to visualize in particular that the ETABS viewer doesn’t do a good job of itself inherently that Rhino might be able to do a better job?
So If I have a bunch of walls or coupling beams in a high rise tower and I want to view envelope loads of all my load combinations etabs takes a while to generate all that information over and over again.
Once you export it all into a spreadsheet, visualizing it into rhino would be nice to
have it on hand to refer to.
send it to the web if needed to describe something to another team member.
A good example is design changes. Lets say over the course of SD to DD I change my wall design 4-5 times due to architectural changes. It would be nice to know why I designed my wall how I did based on some diagram of the forces or how the model behaved at one point it time (forces being a proxy)
In the past we would just create a PDF of elevations with forces and maybe drop the EDB file
but im just thinking out loud
Hi Team,
I am trying the etabs connector on v18, both send and receive are not working for me for some reason on very simple template models. The progress bar just keeps on showing progressing but doesnt conclude the transaction. Please anyone can help me in this.
