About the Emu category

Emu is an interactive structural analysis and form-finding tool based on a 6DOF (6 degrees of freedom) formulation of the dynamic relaxation method allowing engineers and designers to run bi-axial bending and torsion simulations in the parametric environment of Grasshopper3d. It is aimed to be used in early design stages but yet giving real structural feedback.

This category is to discuss the plugin, bug reports, feature requests and other things.

Download the app on food4rhino: Emu | Food4Rhino

Examples and more info can be found here: GitHub - EmilPoulsen/Emu.Resources: Resources for emu

Hi,

First of all, really cool plugin. I saw the demo video and was quite impressed.

I actually just downloaded the tool. I was planning to use it for cable analysis to make sure my form is correct. I had a look at the examples, but I wasn’t able to figure it out. Do you think you could help me with that?

When I plug in the fixtures, it is saying “Node is already part of this element” in red at the model component. Also, how do I actually define the cable? I gave it the same radius and thickness in the pipe component, is that the right way?

I also wanted to confirm with you as to how close the results are to actual FEA?

Thankyou for your time

Jack

Hey Jack,
Have you tried connecting a button to the “Rebuild” input of the Model component? Sometimes rebuilding the model helps to sort out issues with support connections.

You should be able to simulate the effects of cable elements using the bar component. Note that compression will still be accounted for in the current release of Emu, so it won’t work for all cases.

Regarding comparisons to commercial FEM, check out the master thesis publication referenced from here. It contains some comparisons with analytical calculations.