Hello everyone,
I’m currently developing a script using the python script editor in Rhino. As I’m currently working in a Windows machine, the script editor uses IronPython as language.
In the same script, I want to interact with an FE software (Straus7) which has a Python API. When doing so, I have experienced some problems as the ctypes module does not seem to work in IronPython the same way it does in regular Python. Especially, I’m finding problems when initializing arrays using the command:
“ctypes.c_double*3”
For example, if I want to obtain the XYZ coordinates of a node #1 in the FE model, I regular Python I would write the following:
XYZType = ctypes.c_double*3
XYZ = XYZType()
node_num = 1
st.St7GetNodeXYZ(1,node_num,XYZ)
And this returns me a variable XYZ which is a 3D array such that:
XYZ -> <straus_userfunctions.c_double_Array_3 at 0xc5787b0>
XYZ[0] = -0.838537055 -> (X_coord)
…
XYZ[2] = -0.838537055 -> (Z_coord)
On the other side, I copy the same exact script in IronPython, the following error message appears
Message: expected c_double, got c_double_Array_3
Obviously, If I change the variable XYZ to c_double; then it becomes a double variable which contains only a single entry, which corresponds to the first element of the array (in this case, the X-coordinate)
This situation is quite annoying as all FEM softwares, the usage of matrices and arrays is widely used. Consequently, I wanted to ask if anyone nows a simple fix to this situation.
I was thinking of using the memory allocation of the first element of the array to obtain the rest but I’m not so sure how to do so.
Thanks a lot. Gerard