DAVE 1.3 release

DAVE 1.3 has been released. This is a major update with the focus on rigging design and reporting. This post only contains an overview of the new functionality and how to get it. Details of the new features will be highlighted in separate articles.

Highlights

• Rigg-it-right was added to quickly create slings, shackles, pin-in-hole and pin-pin connections: Video

• JupyerLab can now be used together with the GUI to document your workflow and create reports: Video

How to obtain this new version

New users

If you do not yet have DAVE installed then simply follow the installation instructions.

Existing users

Before updating please note that there are a few changes that make this new release incompatible with older versions. So you may need to update your existing models before they can run with the 1.3 version. For details see here

Updating to the newest release can be done via conda. In the command prompt:

activate DAVE
conda update --all

The new revision of equilibrium core will automatically be downloaded when you start DAVE. However DAVE does not have the rights to delete the old core, so we need to do that manually:

• locate pyo3d.pyd or pyo3d.cp38-win_amd64.pyd. It will be located in the “site-packages” folder of your python environment. For example: C:\Users\beneden\Miniconda3\envs\DAVE\Lib\site-packages
• remove the file

What is new

This section presents a summary of the changes. The two most important ones (managed nodes and jupyter lab support) will be highlighted in separate posts.

Equilibrium core

• Improved stability check for equilibrium positions.

API

• Managed nodes
• Slings
• Pin-Hole connections and Bar-Bar connections (Geometric contact)
• Jupyter Lab support for Reporting
• Standard import added. You can now do “from DAVE import *” to get all core components

GUI

• Quick menu for rigging construction
• Extended drag and drop support for construction of geometric contacts and cables
• Size control of elements in the viewport
• Many small fixes and improvements

Breaking changes

• Cable elements connections are now accessible via the .connections property. add_connection and clear_connections are no longer available.
• The endpoints of a cable can now be points as well as circles. Consequently the properties poiA and poiB of a cable have been renamed as endA and endB.
• Sheave nodes can now be used as bar, pin or hole as well. Therefore they have been renamed as “Circle”, highlighting that they are geometry elements. new_sheave is renamed to new_circle
• Poi nodes have been renamed to Point; new_poi is renamed to new_point
• The order of scaling and rotation was aligned between visuals and meshes. Meshes are now first rotated and then scaled.

Was	Replaced by
Poi	Point
new_poi	new_point
Sheave	Circle
new_sheave	new_circle
new_cable(name, poiA=’X’, poiB = ‘Y’)	new_cable(name, endA=’X’, endB = ‘Y’)
cable.clear_connections()	[not needed anymore]
cable.add_connection(xxx)	cable.connections = (‘point1′,’point2′,’point3’)