Architects and Engineers that are trying to compare different curved walkways based on the kind of profile they expect the walkway to follow and compare the various design options based on evaluators member stresses, the aesthetic value of the overall structure and the overall weight of structure.

Unlike buildings, walkways are small-scale structures that generally have a quick turnaround between when the original design is conceptualized and the actual construction takes place. To aid this quick process - Walk of “Frame” - can be used to get an overall understanding of the structural behavior and cost of the structure for the various parametric walkways generated and choose the option that best satisfies the constraints of the project - structural and construction costs.

Typical Output in Dynamo:

Walk of Frame is a structural tool that creates structural framing and performs structural analysis for a Parametric Curved Walkway. The main goal is to enable designers to pick the right member sizes for framing elements of a curved walkways with known profile and curved cross section. Any user can simply feed in some basic inputs such as:

Preview of Dynamo Player interface:

The Dynamo Script will run and generate the Outputs of Total Weight (in Pounds) and Stresses in the Members (Pounds per square foot). The user can simply iterate the sections of the members until the stresses in the members seem to be permissible and the total weight of the members also seems reasonable.

Dynamo Logic:

The first step was to create the framing elements in Dynamo and assign structural framing sections to each of them (Arc members, horizontal members and diagonal bracing members)

Post assigning sections to each of the members, the total weight of the structure was calculated:

This was followed by creating analytical bars and assigning analytical sections to each of these bars for structural analysis using ROBOT. The Structural Analysis Package was loaded on Dynamo for this purpose:

Next, support conditions and load cases were defined. The ends of each of the arc members was assumed to be fixed and a load of 1000 pound/ft was applied to the horizontal members connecting all the arc members. This ensured an easy load path.

The Analysis was run and the bar stresses results compiled.

Cylinders were created in Dynamo and the analysis results were mapped onto the cylinders using a color gradient to help with visualization:

Upon running the structural analysis, the ROBOT window opens up. It should look like:

Shown above is the overall Dynamo Logic.

Recorded Video Demo:

I apologize in advance for the video being over 2 minutes, the interfacing of Dynamo with ROBOT takes almost a minute to run.