User Defined Inputs

In additional to HyperSizer supplied input data, users can add their own users inputs.

User Defined Constants

User defined constants are component settings. The example below shows a user constant for a column buckling analysis, "c_fixity".

User defined constants are created and edited using the Options tab of the Sizing form. See Options Tab.
If a component value is not specified, the default value is used (in the example below the default value is 1.0).
Values can be numeric data or text.
These constants must be created for each project.
This data is passed in to the plugin via analysis constants data type. See AnalysisConstants.

User Data Directory (External Data Source)

The user data directory is a location where the analysis plugin can look to load external data. This setting is defined per database in the Database Plugin Options form. See Database Plugin Options.

The following Fortran pseudo code shows how this external data can be loaded. For performance reasons it is important that this is only loaded once.

subroutine LoadExternalMaterialData(state)

! Loads user material data from a text file.

! The location of the text file is determined by the UserDataDirectory.

type(PanelBeamStateType), intent(in) :: state

! Flag to determine whether the data has already been loaded.

! The save attribute indicates that this local variable save throughout the scope of the application (instead of just locally)

logical, save :: isLoaded = .false.

character(len=LEN_DIR) :: materialDataPath

if (.not. isLoaded) then

materialDataPath = state%UserDataDirectory // "\material_data.txt"

! Open the file ...

! Load the data into global variable storage ....

! Close the file...

! Make sure we don't read the file again.

isLoaded = .true.

end if

end subroutine