Ricecooker

Masaaki MIKI, Jun MITANI, Takeo IGARASHI

Version 0.3

Abstract

The Rhinoceros® is a Nurbs specialized comercial CAD modeler and the Grasshopper is an Add-on of the Rhinoceros® that allows users to visually define sequential rules to generate complex geometries by simply connecting components. The combination of the Rhinoceros and the Grasshopper is now booming in the field of architectural design and expected to bridge the gap between designers and engineers such that total number of users is rapidly increasing in both buisiness and education. We have been developing Ricecooker, which is a set of custom components of the Grasshopper that enables us to easily solve highly nonlinear static problems such as large deformation analysis of elastic solids and form-finding problems in light weight tension structures. Even though the user operations required with the Ricecooker are relatively easier compared to typical commercial finite element packages, the internal computation scheme employed is a regular and standard one such that it is based on nonlinear finite element method and supports isoparametric elements, Gaussian quadrature, Green-Lagrange strain and hyper elastic materials. Also, the Ricecooker supports some simple geometric constraint conditions. So far, the version number is 0.3 as of Nov 2013 and we continue devlopment. The latest version is opened to public at Ricecooker(Grasshopper Groups).

Components

Videos

Large deformation in hyper-elastic solid

Ricecooker0.2 demo-movie 4 from MasaakiMiki on Vimeo



Catenary

Ricecooker0.2 demo-movie5 from MasaakiMiki on Vimeo.




Tensegrity

Ricecooker0.2 demo-movie 6 from MasaakiMiki on Vimeo.




Form-finding of tension structures

Ricecooker0.2 demo-movie 7 from MasaakiMiki on Vimeo.

Publications

Masaaki MIKI, Jun MITANI, Takeo IGARASHI, Development of a Grasshopper Add-on for Interactive Exploration of Shapes in Equilibrium, Sep23-27, IASS 2013, Wroclaw, Poland,