Short guide to Rhino-Membrane

Rhino-Membrane is a very powerful tool for numerical form finding of tensile

structures. This Rhinoceros plug-in combines the efficiency of a modern
finite element approach for shape finding based on the Updated Reference
Strategy with the comfortable and easy-to-use graphical user interface
provided by Rhino. This short tutorial should give you an overview on how
Rhino-Membrane works and help you with your first steps.

Minimal
surfaces

Pneumatic
Hybrid structures
structures

Cable nets
Tent structures
with edge and eye cables
Before you start

Be sure about the physical meaning of your problem set up!!!

For a good result of the form finding process, you have to know what you are doing!
(e.g. what are your input parameters, what is the aim of the calculation, etc.)

Creating the geometry

Create an initial approximation of your structure

using NURBS
- Even pretty rough approximations are generally good enough.
But keep in mind that the closer your guess is to the final solution,
the less the computer has to work afterwards.
- This is an “all Rhino 4.0” step.

Convert the NURBS representation of the

initial geometry to mesh objects
- Rhino-Membrane works only on polygonal faces, as they offer
more geometrical possibilites than NURBS (especially for highly
irregular structures).
- You can use the Rhino command "_Mesh" for this task.
Membrane = Polygonal mesh Cables, Trusses = Lines, Polylines
(triangles, quads, mixed meshes)

© by BDL-Team, 2009
Short guide to Rhino-Membrane

Assigning the problem data

Defining the element properties

- Assign element types and the required properties to the geometric
model using the Rhino-Membrane toolbar
- If the toolbar is not shown, enter the Rhino command "_fnToolbar”
Polygon mesh
- Prestress
Membrane (isotropic, anisotropic)
(form finding) - Pressure (pneumatic structures)

Lines, Polylines
Cable - Pretension
(form finding) (Real force or force density)

Truss - Pretension
(elastic) - Elastic stiffness EA

Bar
(fixed boundary) No special properties

Specify the boundary conditions

- Define the geometrical boundaries of the model
- You have the following possibilities to specify these restraints

Points (Nodes) - Use this one e.g. to define boundary conditions of

cables (please note that the points have to be created before)
- You can fix the Translations in the three spatial
directions (Tx, Ty, Tz)

Mesh nodes - You can also fix single nodes of a polygon mesh
(These nodes don’t have to be created before)
- Again, the three spatial Translations can be fixed (Tx, Ty, Tz)

Bar elements - If you have created some "bar" line elements, these
are automatically fixed.
- If you want to keep the whole boundary of a mesh fixed,
create a boundary mesh of "bars"

© by BDL-Team, 2009
Short guide to Rhino-Membrane

Set the form finding options

- In the option menu you can set various flags regarding the form
finding calculation.
- The most important option is the number of form finding steps:
As form finding is an iterative procedure, the more steps you perform,
the better is your solution. But if no physical solution is possible for the
given problem set-up, the calculation will diverge as "in the real world".

Performing the form finding calculation

Start the numerical calculation

- The finite element analysis is performed, by clicking on .
- The intermediate solutions of the geometry at the end of each form
finding step are displayed allowing for a graphical convergence check.
- The geometry of the final solution is created as a new object on the
active layer. So it’s best to set a special layer active before starting the calculation.

Checking the results

Display the actual membrane stresses

- The stresses are not displayed in wireframe mode (switch to render)
- You can visualize the stresses in warp and weft direction.
These directions are defined according to the
U- and V-mapping coordinates.

Display the reaction forces (version 1.2 and above)

- Choose the option "Reaction" in the "Stress plot" menu.
- You can change the direction of the force vectors in the option menu.

Creating a new problem

Initialize the problem data

- In order to clear all data of the previous calculation, click on .
- Of course, starting a new file will do the clearing as well.

Becoming familiar with the program

Once you understand the basic concepts of Rhino-Membrane, try more advanced
structures. Especially the combination of form finding elements with elastic trusses
provides a huge number of interesting possibilites (tensegrity, hybrid structres, etc.)

© by BDL-Team, 2009
Short guide to Rhino-Membrane

Download

A demo version of Rhino-Membrane can be downloaded here:

www.ixcube.com
This trial version has full functionability, but is limited in time and model size.

Contact

Johannes Linhard j.linhard@membranes24.com

Kai-Uwe Bletzinger kub@bv.tum.de
Gerry D’Anza gerry@forten32.com

© by BDL-Team, 2009