Hi everyone,
I’m currently working on a timber project in Rhino where, for fabrication purposes, it’s beneficial to work entirely in millimeters. However, I’m struggling to get Karamba3D to run with this setup.
I’ve tried editing the karamba.ini file on macOS to switch the unit system to mm, but the change doesn’t seem to take effect or resolve the underlying math and precision issues.
The main problem is that I cannot assign supports. Even though my support points are extracted directly from the beam centerlines, the Assemble component fails to find them. I keep getting variations of this error:
“Could not find node at (63897.0963… / -4100.1007… / 320.0853…) where support index 0 is attached.”
I’ve verified the coordinates and they correlate with the available endpoints, so I assume this is a rounding/precision issue during the node-merging process at this scale.
Questions:
-
Are there specific steps to make the
karamba.inichanges stick on macOS, or does the solver fundamentally expect meters/feet for its internal calculations? -
Is this a general limitation of the software architecture where one should simply never work in mm, or is there a robust way to handle supports and cross-sections at this scale?
I’m trying to avoid the “detour” of scaling the entire geometry back and forth between meters and millimeters if possible, but I want to ensure the structural results remain valid.
Any tips or workflow suggestions would be very welcome.
Best regards,
Lorin W