Stress function-based thin shell form-finding solver

Grasshopper Developer
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I am not sure how many people out there are interested in this, and the research paper is still under review.
But the component is about to step out beyond the prototype phase. I decided to silently distribute the component here to collect the initial feedback. I welcome any feedback and donation (donation link is also provided in the link below)

This is a NURBS-based, and Airy’s stress function-based, form-finding solver. I named it Godzilla, along with two other components that can be used for validation, Kingghidorah and Radon. Consequently, the entire project is named KingOfMonsters.

More detail can be found by clicking this link.
http://mmiki.wikidot.com/kingofmonsters

This is what’s possible by the component.

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render31920×1080 52.8 KB

2 Likes
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Sample file 01-A did not work correctly. The issue is already fixed and a new Zip file has been uploaded to the site.

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uploaded example 07-A and 09-A to the site. Are there anybody managed to run the component? any feedback is highly appreciated. This form finding is a sort of ultimate, it computes Nurbs directly and a mix of tension and compression is allowed.

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render51920×1080 131 KB

1 Like
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Here are more images.

07-A
07-A1768×785 195 KB

03-A
03-A1694×780 156 KB

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Because nobody has bo far responded (except a few likes), I’ll write down instructions below on how to run the component. I apologize if these repeating posts have annoyed somebody. But I don’t believe nobody is interested.

if you have a CUDA enabled Nvidia GPU,

  1. You need to install Cuda toolkit 11.5
  2. download
    http://mmiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/kingofmonsters/KingOfMonsters_Godzilla_only_01_02_03_bugfix3.zip
    and
    http://mmiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/kingofmonsters/KingOfMonsters_Godzilla_Only_07_09.zip
  3. extract the zip archives, copy all the extracted files to the same folder. (the .3dm files, .gh files and the KinfOfMonsters.dll must be placed in the same folder)
  4. Open one of the .3dm file and the gh file with the same file name as the .3dm file.

if you don’t have a CUDA-enabled Nvidia GPU, you still need all CUDA-related DLLs to pass the initialization phase although those DLLs are never used.

  1. You still need to install the Cuda toolkit 11.5.
  2. You also need to have nvcuda.dll in a discoverable location. It can be downloaded from this link.
    http://mmiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/kingofmonsters/CUDA_DLL.zip
    As a “discoverable” location, I recommend “C:\Program Files\Rhino 7\System”
  3. download
    http://mmiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/kingofmonsters/KingOfMonsters_Godzilla_only_01_02_03_bugfix3.zip
    and
    http://mmiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/kingofmonsters/KingOfMonsters_Godzilla_Only_07_09.zip
  4. extract the zip archives, copy all the extracted files to the same folder. (the .3dm files, .gh files and the dll must be placed in the same folder)
  5. Open one of the .3dm file and the gh file with the same file name as the .3dm file. Before opening the .gh file, lock the grasshopper solver, so that the script does not run. Then, find a toggle switch plugged into the “gpu” slot. Turn it off. And, finally, enable the grasshopper solver.

The code is directly coded to the C# node. However, the computation-heavy subroutines are written in C++ and encapsulated in KingOfMonsters.dll. The code for KingOfMonsters.dll can be found at https://github.com/mikity-mikity/KingOfMonsters