freecadparametricfea 0.1.1

A flexible parametric FEA library based on FreeCAD

freecadparametricfea

A flexible parametric FEA library based on FreeCAD, currently supporting FreeCAD 0.20. Some of this will be posted as a video tutorial on the @engineeringmaths Youtube channel

Warning this project is very early release, and should not be used for any serious structural analysis. It is aimed at hobbyists and makers

Quickest start

Create a Python 3.8 virtual environment:

pipenv --python 3.8

Install the latest version from pypi:

pipenv install freecadparametricfea

then run any of the examples inside the examples folder

Quick start

Create a FreeCAD part and assign names to the constraints that you want to change. You need to set up a FEA analysis as well, I have tested this using CalculiX and GMsh .

Then in a script, or on the command line, run:

from FreecadParametricFEA import parametric as pfea
import numpy as np
# you need to manually specify the path to FreeCAD on your system, for now:
FREECAD_PATH = "C:/Program Files/FreeCAD 0.20/bin"

# initialise a parametric FEA object
fea = pfea(freecad_path=FREECAD_PATH)

# load the FreeCAD model
fea.set_model("your-part-here.fcstd")

# list the parameters to sweep:
fea.set_variables(
    [
        {
            "object_name": "CutsSketch", # the object where to find the constraint
            "constraint_name": "NotchDistance", # the constraint name that you assigned 
            "constraint_values": np.linspace(10, 30, 5), # the values you want to check
        },
        {
            "object_name": "CutsSketch",
            "constraint_name": "NotchDiam",
            "constraint_values": np.linspace(5, 9, 5),
        },
    ]
)

# setup the FEA analysis - we need to know the CalculiX results object and the solver name
fea.setup_fea(fea_results_name="CCX_Results", solver_name="SolverCcxTools")

# run and save the results (will return a Pandas DataFrame)
results = fea.run_parametric()

# plot the results
fea.plot_fea_results()

Feeling fancy

You can export individual ParaView files using:

results = fea.run_parametric(export_results=True)

Or just save the results dataframe in a .csv:

fea.save_fea_results("results.csv")

... or even take a look at the parameters matrix before running any analysis:

results = fea.run_parametric(dry_run=True)

Contributing

I have created this for hobby and personal use, as I was interested in learning more about FreeCAD and writing Python modules. There are a lot of things that I would like to fix, if you want to get involved have a look at the open issues and send me a message if you have any questions.