A new GiD problemtype for OpenSees

Vassilis K. Papanikolaou Assistant Professor

Lab of R/C and Masonry Structures, School of Civil Engineering, Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki, Greece
P.O. Box 482, Thessaloniki 54124, Greece e-mail: billy@civil.auth.gr

A new graphical user interface has been recently developed for OpenSees, which
seamlessly connects the OpenSees framework with the general pre/post-processor
GiD. This problemtype, available as open-source, is easily installed in the GiD graphical
environment and provides an extended set of user dialogs and tools to efficiently
create model geometry, assign materials, elements and boundary conditions, select
various analysis options and finally invoke the OpenSees solver to execute the
analysis. The interface automatically transforms the bulk of numerical results
produced by OpenSees to a GiD-compatible format, for the user to take advantage
of the versatile GiD graphical postprocessor, which includes a deformed shape
viewer with animation capabilities, force/stress/strain vectors and contours, line
diagrams and x-y graphs. The interface currently provides a comprehensive set of
standard and combined materials as well as 1D / 2D / 3D elements for linear and
nonlinear, static and dynamic analysis. The interface supports multiple model domains
(groups of elements with different number of DOFs), for easy modeling of soil-
structure interaction (SSI) problems. Various modeling and analysis facilitations are
also included, such as custom fiber sections, a record viewer, automatic substepping,
and performance statistics. The above features render this new problemtype a
promising alternative to the cumbersome script-based modeling, considerably
shortening the respective learning curve, especially for new and inexperienced users.

More information at http://gidopensees.rclab.civil.auth.gr