Strawberry Tools

Strawberry Lab is an initiative to create free tools for structural engineers to tackle specific bottle-necks in their workflow. Tools that we are creating are automating areas of modelling and loading for cases with large amounts of structural elements, interoperability with professional software package SCIA Engineer is established by provided components. Components are grouped by structure type. Important note: Downloadable archive contains *.gh example file, *.gha and *.dll source. Sources needs to be unblocked before use in Windows (Windows marks downloaded *.gha and *.dll as blocked by default - to unblock just right-click on the source, select "Properties" and click on button "Unblock").

Terrain Modeler is a simple tool to turn surfaces and meshes defined by Rhino or Grasshopper geometry into terrain elevations with variable height. Alternative supported format is an external DXF file that contains 3D faces representing the terrain. Such DXF may be obtained for example by online map service at cadmapper.com. Terrain modeller is further used as a definition of topology for parametric bridge modeller, that generates parametric bridge based on the terrain and road definition (currently not yet available). Version 1.0 contains 2 components:

• Component for creating contour lines based on inputted Mesh that is defined by smooth surface. Mesh may be either triangular or composed of quads. 
• Component for creating terrain contours based on custom DXF file with terrain topology defined by Face3D

Bridge Substructure Modeller enables based on Road definition and available terrain definition (result of Terrain Modeller components) to construct topology of the bridge substructure. The components allow for variety of input parameters that define position of the bridge, length of separate spans, size of foundations and amount of piles underneath, basic definition of abutments and columns. Furthermore, the bridge definition is possible to convert to data model that may be imported to SCIA Engineer. Bridge substructure modeller Example is extended to show application of simplified bridge deck and conversion of the Bridge model into Karamba 3D model. Bridge substructure modeller contains following components:

• Reduce Map Domain is used to optimize performance of following components. Simply put, this component reduces the amount of used terrain nodes by taking into account only nodes in the vicinity of defined Road line.
• Bridge support line is a component that determines the center line of the bridge deck based on the determined road projection onto the terrain.
• Bridge Columns and Bridge Abutments are components that based on the bridge centre line and defined spans calculates position and length of columns together with foundation size and pile count. Basic representation of abutment walls with foundation walls and piles is also available.
• Arc Bridge Model is an extension to basic multi-span bridge substructure model that based on arc topology transforms the multi-span bridge into an Arc bridge.
• Bridge Model Export and Model to Scia are components that combined convert defined model of a bridge into XML file readable by SCIA Engineer.

Cooling Tower Modeller  was in its first version developed as a research project at the Faculty of civil engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague. Cooling Towers have high complexity of definition of the wind load as it is variable both along the height of the tower and also along the tower. Usually, such model is created with discrete "meshing" and separate faces are loaded separately. Cooling Tower modeller aims to automate the manual and lengthy work of applying load to not only cooling towers, but also other cylindrical structures (silos, steel tanks, etc.). Cooling Tower Modeler was rewritten in order to be accessible for Grasshopper users and it contains few components for parametric definition of a cooling tower and calculation of wind action on it according to Eurocode standard EN 1991-1-4. Cooling tower modeller contains following components:

• Component for tower topology and dimension definition and determination of load action. (This components is available in 2 options, with internal data format or with possibility of link with SCIA Engineer plugin Koala)
• XML export for SCIA Engineer (professional software package for structural analysis)
• Possibility of export of MS Word report containing wind load data. Supported Languages are English and Czech
• Components for conversion of data in native Rhino elements (Lines, Surfaces)