Functions from ops_vis()

[u-anurag]

Let's discuss what can be imported from ops_vis().

• Display elastic moment and shear distribution on elements.

• Display of stress and strain in 2D shell elements. This display is great but this method does not work for 3D elements.

• Animation of mode-shapes. Not a priority but cool to have it.

@sewkokot We would love your inputs. Even if you don't have time to code, we would appreciate your guidance towards specific Matplotlib functions that could make our life easier.

@cslotboom what functions would you like to help import? I can take care of the shell element stress/strain display since I am already working on it.

[cslotboom]

The functions that plot fiber stress/strain as a heat map definitely should be ported - I was planning something similar already. I can do this, I have plans to extend the existing fiber functions to 3D.

I like the moment/shear distribution functions and have a few thoughts:

1. I worry about giving people information that is incorrect - I would like to understand how the moment distributions are made.
2. I worry it will be messy to show the internal force for all members at once
3. It would be interesting if we could extend this to the nonlinear case as well.

I was thinking of implementing the elastic moment/shear distributions as events. i.e. you click on the element, and see the internal distribution of forces/strains. You could then animate these plots over model time.
Maybe we could have a function plot_element_internal_Force? This then could be called for by events in the deformed shape function.

For the mode shapes, I was thinking of modifying the existing plot_mode_shape() so that the user can cycle through modes with a button push. This is a fairly straight forward add, but will likely require that the function is converted to a class.

[u-anurag]

1. I worry about giving people information that is incorrect - I would like to understand how the moment distributions are made.

As far as I understand, this is just the elastic distribution. It is not valid for non-linear analysis cases. I can see this being used in classroom teaching (Statics, Structural Analysis I, II etc.).

I was thinking of implementing the elastic moment/shear distributions as events. i.e. you click on the element, and see the internal distribution of forces/strains. You could then animate these plots over model time.

I like this idea.

Maybe we could have a function plot_element_internal_Force? This then could be called for by events in the deformed shape function.

I guess a good way is to have a function like plot_elasticForces('shear' or 'moment' or 'internalForces'), instead of three different functions.

For the mode shapes, I was thinking of modifying the existing plot_mode_shape() so that the user can cycle through modes with a button push. This is a fairly straight forward add, but will likely require that the function is converted to a class.

I have tried this locally a few months ago. It worked on the terminal but did not work on Jupyter Notebooks.

[u-anurag]

See #86. I have shared my script with modeshape buttons to save you some work if you haven't started it yet. You can clean it.