Category: Programming

Sometimes Tags Don’t Matter

When building a model in OpenSees, you have to ensure that you have unique tags for your domain components (nodes, elements, patterns, time series, parameters, etc.), reliability components (random variables, limit state functions, etc.), and model building components (materials, sections, beam integrations, etc.). If you define a duplicate tag, you will get an error message. … Continue reading Sometimes Tags Don’t Matter →

How to Profile OpenSees

Where does the time in a nonlinear finite element analysis go? For large models, solving equations dominates the analysis time, while for small to moderate models, constitutive models (state determination) dominate. It is impossible to know the relative cost of state determination and solving equations prior to an analysis. Profiling tools can tell you after … Continue reading How to Profile OpenSees →

Don’t Invert the Matrix

A common issue with linear algebra textbooks is the depiction of $latex {\bf x}={\bf A}^{-1}{\bf b}$ as the solution to the linear system of equations $latex {\bf A}{\bf x}={\bf b}$. Find the inverse of the matrix $latex {\bf A}$, then multiply that inverse with the right-hand side vector, $latex {\bf b}$. Theoretically correct? Yes. Practical? … Continue reading Don’t Invert the Matrix →

Single Quotes or Double?

Python, like many other languages, uses single (') and double quotes (") for multi-character strings. This was a bit for me to digest coming from the C++ world where single and double quotes have distinct uses: single quotes for a character and double quotes for strings. Functionally, there's no difference between single and double quotes … Continue reading Single Quotes or Double? →

Stop Hogging All the RAM

While writing a previous post on elastic shear beams available in OpenSees, I noticed that the ElasticTimoshenkoBeam3d class stores the element stiffness matrix, along with several other matrices, as private data. As a result, each instance of this class keeps its own copy of several 12x12 matrices for the element response instead of writing to … Continue reading Stop Hogging All the RAM →

OpenSeesPy List Comprehensions

OpenSees was always meant to be an API and you can use various helper functions like ops.eleResponse() and ops.nodeDisp() to get selected response quantities. You will find, however, that the values returned by these commands are not always congruent with what you want. In many cases, Python list comprehensions give an easy one-liner for morphing … Continue reading OpenSeesPy List Comprehensions →

Unrolling the Four Node Quad

The FourNodeQuad was one of the first, if not the first, solid elements in OpenSees. Despite the element's mediocre implementation, the coding style was copied by others into subsequent solid element implementations. Fortunately, before that copying happened, I revised the implementation to be more computationally efficient--and I was kind enough to leave the original author's … Continue reading Unrolling the Four Node Quad →

Un-MATLAB Your OpenSees

Many people develop their OpenSees elements and materials in MATLAB, then port to C++. To support this transition, OpenSees implements easy matrix-vector algebra by overloading the +, -, *, and ^ operators for the Matrix and Vector classes. The overloaded operators are self-explanatory, except for ^, which is "transpose times" or inner product. C = … Continue reading Un-MATLAB Your OpenSees →

An OpenSeesSPecial Request

Due to sendSelf and recvSelf implementation neglect, OpenSeesSP is broken. I want it to work. Not for OpenSees Cloud, we'll do fine without OpenSeesSP. Instead, it's for everyone out there who wants to run a large model locally without encountering stubborn errors or jumping through hoops to use OpenSeesMP. So, I have a small request--even … Continue reading An OpenSeesSPecial Request →