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Visual Dynamics

A units-aware structural dynamics toolset: import test and model data, look at it, identify modal parameters, correlate a test against a finite element model, and write the report — from a desktop app or from Python, with the same objects and the same verbs behind both.

Where to start

  • Principles — what the toolset is trying to be, and the standard every part of it is held to. Start here if you want to know whether it fits how you work.
  • Getting started — install, open the app, run the same workflow as a script.
  • Guide — how the pieces fit: projects and links, which geometry an object answers to, units, plotting, the modal workflow, reports.
  • API reference — every module, class, attribute and function in the package, generated from the code when the site is built, so it is never out of date. It is in the site's navigation rather than in the repository: run properdocs serve and it is the API reference section.

The one idea worth knowing first

A project holds named objects — a geometry, some time data, FRFs, mode shapes — and the structure around them: which objects are linked together, which linked group is the Basis of comparisons, what kind of test this is. The desktop app's tree is a project, and so is visualdynamics.Project in a script; both save to the same .vdyn file, and each opens the other's.

import visualdynamics

project = visualdynamics.Project('Plate Modal Survey')
project.import_file('modal_spectra.nc4')
project.set_basis(*project.names)
project.compute_psds('Time History')
project.fit_modes(project.basis.frf, bounds=(300.0, 1300.0), limit=5)
print(project)

Project: Plate Modal Survey  [Modal Test]
  Basis
    Channel Table        ChannelTable  13 channels
    Time History         TimeHistory   260 records, 2048 samples
    Time History PSDs    Psd           13 records, 1025 samples
    FRF                  Frf           22 records, 1025 samples
    Multiple Coherence   MultipleCoherence 11 records, 1025 samples
    FRF Modes            ShapeSet      5 modes, 439.2-1142 Hz

Nothing above is a shortcut written for scripts: every line is the verb behind a button in the app. What each object holds, and what can be done with each kind, is one page: The objects.

Documentation policy

Guides are written by hand and explain why. The API reference is not written down at all: docs/gen_api.py walks the package while the site builds and mkdocstrings renders the docstrings, so the reference is the code — a new module is a new page, a new method documents itself, and there is nothing that can drift because there is nothing to keep in step.

That puts the weight on the docstrings, which is where it belongs. properdocs build --strict fails on a broken cross-reference, and tests/test_docs.py holds the generator to the whole package rather than to a list of it.

The site is a page of visualdynamics.org: properdocs build writes it into the website's own tree, and the release workflow deploys the two together, so it answers at visualdynamics.org/documentation. To work on it from a clone:

pip install -e '.[docs]'
properdocs serve        # localhost:8000, live reload