We model share with a client. My grasshopper script was working fine last night, and until now. For some reason now my Tekla links are no longer active. I assume it must be due to a read-in from them?? I reassigned the links to a few objects, and I can see the link is working fine. What might cause this to occur? I re-booted, and opened the software packages in the correct order.
Grasshopper scripts work just fine with Tekla Model Sharing, I have had not issues at all with that, so I think you can take that off your list of suspects.
The linking between the script and the object in Tekla is stored in a bunch of files that is saved in the Tekla Model folder sub-folder with the name Grasshopper, looks like the image below.
Make sure that no one has manually renamed or deleted these files, that would be a problem.
And as you mentioned, you always need to first open the Tekla model, then start Rhino and then last open up GH and the script.
Hope this helps.
I re-established a few links and they wrote out. Nothing went wrong.
I see the Guid’s for the parts, so at least I can figure them out. The order I picked some things will be important. Multitasking between models is sure important to pay attention to. I had to open a few things earlier to answer some questions, and I bet that was the problem. This script does not use a lot of Tekla objects, so it will be easy to fix. I wanted mainly to know for the future.
Thanks, that was very helpful.
It appears the GUID’s changed. I am not sure why, but when I search for the GUID’s grasshopper is looking for in Tekla, they no longer exist. I was working on a few projects, and I suspect I did this by opening a different model to check something. I thought I would share if someone else runs into this.
Hi Brad, even if you open another model and run the definition there, the links to the previous model objects should be re-established when the previous model is opened again, since the mapping files are stored in the model folder. If the previous model wasn’t saved that could be part of the issue.
If we’re only talking about input params i.e. objects that are picked and referenced from Tekla params, the situation is a bit different since these references are stored in the GH file. However as long as you don’t try to pick anything new in another model the references should be re-established when you open the previous model again.
But this is theory of course, so if you can find a replicateable scenario where this fails I’d be happy to hear about it!
For completion, here’s the list off known situations that might cause new guids and duplicated objects:
Cheers,
Sebastian
@sebastian.lindholm, I really appreciate all your help here. I am experimenting with using Grasshopper to do a lot of simple calculations. A lot of this script is is finding dimensions from the model. I recall an error message where I had to close Tekla, and it might have been after that the link was damaged. I had reasonably good notes in the script, so it was not a problem to correct the links. Luckily it was only the beams, and not all the random points. If this were to happen again should I remove any of the original gh link files or might it be ok? I have a few more weeks to finish this, and I am planning to add more to the script.
1 Like
That could potentially prevent object references from being saved yes. You shouldn’t need to remove any mapping files, any guids in them will just be overwritten if they can’t be found from the model any more.
But good that you’re able to charge on!
@sebastian.lindholm, it happened again. How does one safely open old grasshopper files that were linked with Tekla to get portions of scripts? I don’t remember all the script steps, so it is handy to get from old files. I opened an old script without Tekla open today, and copied the portions needed to the script I was working on. I closed everything, opened tekla, then rhino, and finally GH. All the tekla links are no longer active. I see now none of the grasshopper link files in the model folder have been updated since May 8, but I have added new links since then. I can fix this again, but I will have to figure out the workflow better.
Hi, so we’re not talking about the object creating components at all, e.g. these:
But rather the Tekla params:
The object creating ones are storing mappings to files, whereas the params are storing their references in the Grasshopper definition. Which is why the link files haven’t been updated, that’s expected as such.
I haven’t explored scenarios where params lose their references, so can’t say straight away what the best practices are or if we need to fix something in the code. I’d need to too some testing and come back - you hint at a way to replicate this by opening old scripts, let me know if you’re able to narrow it down further.
@sebastian.lindholm in this case others have modelled the structure using normal practices and I am collecting geometry from the model for the analysis. I have used tekla points, beams, and assembly geometry (snips below). Grasshopper takes the geometry and figures out the loads to apply to the analysis model. Geometrygym maps all of that into the analysis software.
In different projects I have used grasshopper to create Tekla geometry like beams, columns and custom components. Those scripts contain some useful code blocks for the analysis steps that I like to grab to save time. I still struggle to find all the Geomgym components I need so it is much faster to go to old code. I find it is very easy to end up with some new Tekla geometry that I do not want, so in this case I closed tekla, rhino, and grasshopper. I re-opened rhino and grasshopper. I then opened the old script that had the analysis blocks I wanted. I copied that code to the clipboard. From what you describe the data I am using seems to be more of a live link and not stored the same. I think the mistake was pasting the old code into the code I was working on and saving it without opening tekla first. I think what I will do is keep a script with useful code blocks without any of the tekla links. That I can open while working on my project without being concerned about new geometry. In a project like this it would be very easy to mess things up for our client. Many of them are not great with Tekla, so this becomes a problem I get to deal with.
Another key is making backups more often, duh. I am much quicker at putting it back together now, and I sure did figure out a lot of things I can improve.
It is great to get all this help. Tekla support would not be any help with any of this. Thank you very much.
