RISA 3D Batch input

[awa5114]

For my job, I frequently have situations which arise with dozens (if not hundreds) of beams with different cross sections/loading/boundary/geometric conditions. In our firm, we use RISA3D. I am trying to find a more systematic way of inputting cross section/loading/boundary/geometric data into RISA3D such that it can analyze and output results for, say, 100 beams without me having to draw out each one. Does RISA3D support some sort of scripting language or commands that allow batch analysis of beams?

 

[mike20793]

It's spreadsheet based input so just make your formulas in Excel and then copy then over. I do it all the time.

 

[awa5114]

Good point. I wonder if there is automated Excel to Risa interopability that could enable this sort of thing without having to manually copy the values...

 

[PMR06]

I've always wondered this too, but never had time to experiment. You can open/edit the .r3d file in Notepad. Perhaps you could write a Visual Basic script from Excel to generate or edit the .r3d file?

 

[awa5114]

Never knew you could open an R3D file in notepad. That's pretty neat. Once the syntax there is understood there should definitely be a way to generate a custom one...

 

[Ingenuity]

Good to know about the .r3d file.

But it is funny. Back in the day (not too many decades ago) creating batch files was the only way to go. No pre-processing. Gone full circle!

 

[mike20793]

With keyboard shortcuts and visual basic macros copying and pasting is super easy. It's even easier to use formulas to determine geometric points. I go back and forth for design of domes all the time with great ease. I've had models with almost a million plate elements and modeling and applying the loads takes about an hour max.

 

[awa5114]

Mike,

The spreadsheet idea is very good. I have one comment though, Isn't the limit for RISA3D, as shown in page 2 of the General Reference Manual (

http://www.risa.com/documents/risa-3d/R3DGenRef.pdf),

currently at 100,000 for plate elements?

 

[Ingenuity]

For 64-bit machines it is 250,000 plates, as per the latest v14 manual:

 

[awa5114]

Still less than a million...

 

[JoshPlumSE]

I was out of the office and tied up with other things for a few days, so I didn't get a chance to respond until now.

The RISA help file has an Appendix D - File Format. This will go over most of the basics of what is expected for each record of the input file.

All the information in this appendix should be accurate, though not necessarily updated for all the latest changes. There will be newer features that are not explained / documented at all. And, there may very well be fields missing in some of the existing features.

For example, we may say that the member data entry has 16 fields when it may actually have 18 fields. If so, the first 16 will be as described in the appendix and the two extra fields will be associated with features or information that was added after the appendix was written.

If you create a file with just those 16 fields the model will read in fine. It just will use default settings for those extra fields... as if the program were opening a file from an older version of the program that didn't contain those fields.

If anyone runs into an issue where they need an explanation of a certain field that isn't fully explained, you should contact tech support and we'll look it up for you.... And, hopefully update the documentation at the same time.

 

[BUGGAR]

I used to like to import STAAD batch files into Risa.

 

[awa5114]

Hi JoshPLum, that is awesome, exactly what I was looking for. I've also been using a combination of RISA3D and notepad++ to decipher the fields I am not sure about (Notepad++ constantly refreshes to reflect changes in the input file). Unfortunately I've run into another hiccup... The solutions/results (.__s) file. This one too is readable by notepad, and seems to have a logical, similar format, but when I open with Notepad I am getting a lot of null/gibberish in between the tags, although the tags seem to make sense. I also know I have sensible results because I'm getting shear/moment/deflection diagrams in RISA3D. Here's a snippet below:

[..DEFLECTION_RESULT] <2>
{START_LINE}
ÿÿÿÿ ­Ò¶OÉƒí» œ²: {END_LINE}
{START_LINE}

ÿÿÿÿ «Ò¶OÉƒí» œ²: î½?{END_LINE}
[..END_DEFLECTION_RESULT]

I'm hoping this is just a setting in Windows or RISA3D that I can tweak to fix this? It would be great to also be able to make use of the solutions file...

Thanks y'all

 

[JoshPlumSE]

The solution results file is binary. It does have keyword markers in it, but it is not intended to be read by anything other than our programs. The reason for the keyword markers is so that the various programs can read each others results 3D + Floor, 3D + Connection, et cetera.

For results, your best option is to print out a "flat file" of the spreadsheet output. This will create an ASCII text file of the all the output spreadsheets that can then imported into Excel or read and manipulated by macros or such.