Karamba3d

Interaction with Karamba3d within Grasshopper

Karamba3d

Karamaba3d is a structural analysis tool which is embedded within Grasshopper. It provides a way to get quick structural analysis feedback on a structure at an early design stage without requiring the need to leave grasshopper or interact with external analysis programs. It can also be helpful for performing optimisation routines quicker and more efficiently.

In order to verify or continue to the design, Geometry Gym allows for the Import/Export of Karamba3d models to and from external programs, as well as IFC format.

For information on Karamba3d visit the website at the link below.

Karamba3D – parametric engineering

Some of the tools may be affected by your Karamba license version. Refer to Karamba3d website for version limitations.

Installation of Karamba3d Tools

For Structural Analysis

Each GeometyryGym structural analysis plug-in is automatically provided with the associated karamba3d components. These will load if you have the correct version of Karamba installed.

It is hard to provide installers on our website for all versions of Karamba and all versions of a Structural Analysis Program. If the Karamba3d components result in an error, it is likely that we may need to provide a installer specific to the version of Karamba you are using.

For BIM

For Import and Export of IFC components, these are provided in a separate installer, ggRhinoKaramba. This installer can be installed and downloaded from the downloads page on our website.

For export to Tekla, the components are provided in the ggRhinoTekla plug-in, similar to structural analysis.

Once the appropriate structural analysis and BIM plug-ins have been loaded you should be able to see the corresponding import and export functions available for that particular plug-in.

GeometryGym Karamba3d tools

User Interface

The Geometry Gym Karamba3d tools are located under the Karamber3d tab in Grasshopper. Depending on which version of Rhino and version of Karamba they could be in slightly different locations.

In order to view the required export option for the structural analysis program you will require that structural analysis plug-in to be installed, along with the Rhino6Karamba3d plug-in.

Importing

Currently, there are import options which allow importing of a number of analysis model formats and transfer those into components which can allow the building of a Karamba3d analysis models. We provide import for all the structural analysis plug-in programs as well as additional file format imports including IFC and DSTV.

The importing of models can be set up as a dynamic process. If you are building or manipulating a model within Grasshopper and stream baking the model to an external file while continuously reading the file you can preview dynamic updates within Karamba3d.

By setting up a dynamic file update process you can also use the model viewer in Karamba3D to get a visual representation of supports, and loading's.

Exporting

The ggKarambaTo###

To export a Karamba3d model to a particular analysis program or IFC file select the appropriate ggKarambaTo### component from those provided. This will allow you to export a given model to the appropriate structural analysis package file.

Converting Catalogue Profiles to Karamba3d Cross Sections

ggProfileToKaramba

Karamba3d has limited catalogue profiles. If they do not provide catalogue profiles that you are looking for then it is possible to convert GG catalogue profiles into a Karamba Section using the ggProfileToKaramba component. This component can be found under the

The steps below outline how you can do this.

First, search the given profiles you would like to convert from the ggSearchSectionProp component under BullAnt.

Second, generate an IFC profile def and then convert them to an output JSON format using the provided IFC components.