Visual Dynamics¶

A units-aware structural dynamics toolset. It imports test and model data, plots it, identifies modal parameters, correlates a test with a finite element model, builds finite element models of its own, and writes the report. All of it can be done from the desktop app or from Python, and both use the same objects and the same verbs.

Where to start¶

Principles: what the toolset is meant to be, and the standard every part of it is held to. Read this first if you want to know whether it fits the way you work.
Getting started: install it, open the app, and run the same workflow as a script.
Guide: how the parts fit together, including projects and links, which geometry an object answers to, units, plotting, the modal workflow, the finite element workflow and reports.
Architecture and conventions: for someone about to change the code. It covers the package by layer, the rule that the app and a script share one workflow, the docstring standard and the test conventions.
API reference: every module, class, attribute and function in the package, generated from the code each time the site is built. It is in the site's navigation rather than in the repository; run properdocs serve and it is the API reference section.

Projects¶

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, and what kind of test it is. The tree in the desktop app 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

Each line of the script is the verb behind a button in the app; none of it is a separate interface written for scripts. What each object holds, and what can be done with each kind, is on one page: The objects.

How the documentation is written¶

The guides are written by hand and explain why things work the way they do. The API reference is not written separately: docs/gen_api.py walks the package while the site builds, and mkdocstrings renders the docstrings. A new module gets a new page and a new method appears with its docstring, so the reference always matches the code.

That makes the docstrings the place where the reference is kept. properdocs build --strict fails on a broken cross-reference, and tests/test_docs.py checks that the generator reaches every module in the package.

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

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