KarambaIDEA developed and released by the Dutch research project SMARTConnection

The IDEA StatiCa team took part in SMARTConnection workshop session organized by the Dutch Steel Society / Bouwen met Staal on June 27th, 2019.

Construction professionals from around the Netherlands gathered to listen to Rayaan Ajouz who presented the SMARTconnection research project, funded by Bouwen met Staal.

Within this research, new methods are developed to analyze steel connections in a smart automatic process. The goal of this project is to increase the feasibility and buildability of the design of steel structures by performing these analyses of steel structures on both global and detail levels and cost optimization. As part of the SMARTconnection research project, an integral analysis model for an industrial steel hall will be developed. The ultimate goal is to be able to make cost comparisons between variants produced by the parametric model.

KarambaIDEA integration

The new plug-in KarambaIDEA caught the extraordinary attention of the workshop audience. KarambaIDEA is a Grasshopper plug-in that enables to export steel joints from the parametric steel structure modeled in Karamba3D to IDEA Statica Connection for further analysis, on a detail level.

Karamba3D, one of the software packages used in the workflow, is a parametric structural engineering tool that provides accurate analysis of spatial trusses, frames, and shells. Karamba3D is fully embedded in the parametric design environment of Grasshopper, a plugin for the 3d modeling tool Rhinoceros. This makes it easy to combine parameterized geometric models, finite element calculations and optimization algorithms like Galapagos.

Read more about the project and download the Grasshopper file

KarambaIDEA demo videos

You can also watch the presentation introducing KarambaIDEA examples:

And, another example of using KaramabaIDEA in a workflow for parametric steel halls:

This research project makes extensive use of the new IDEA Open Model (IOM) API in order to build automated workflows. The universal interface is open to anybody who wishes to automate their workflow.

You can find more information about the KarambaIDEA plug-in here.

IDEA StatiCa is proud to be in the front line for these kinds of innovative research projects. If you have an idea of how workflows in your office could be improved,  let us know.