Parts and Assemblies¶

In ada-py the Part and Assembly objects are used to define the hierarchy of elements. Assembly is the top-level object referenced only once per project, while the Part object is used to represent all hierarchical levels underneath the Assembly.

import ada

In ada-py there are two ways to add objects to a Part. You can use the add_object method or you can use the / operator.

bm = ada.Beam("bm1", (0,0,0), (1,0,0), 'IPE300')
pl = ada.Plate('pl1', [(0,0), (1,0), (1,1), (0,1)], 0.01)
p = ada.Part('myPart')
p.add_object(bm)
p.add_object(pl)
p.show()

Or you can use "/" (inspired by how pathlib concatenates paths).

bm = ada.Beam("bm1", (0,0,0), (1,0,0), 'IPE300')
pl = ada.Plate('pl1', [(0,0), (1,0), (1,1), (0,1)], 0.01)
p = ada.Part('MyPart') / (bm, pl)
p.show()

You are free to nest parts to you like to create a hierarchy of elements.

You'll notice that there are several methods available on the Part object to export it to different formats

[x for x in dir(p) if x.startswith("to_")]

['to_aveva_mac',
 'to_fem',
 'to_fem_obj',
 'to_gltf',
 'to_obj_mesh',
 'to_stp',
 'to_trimesh',
 'to_trimesh_scene']

However, if you want to export to formats such as IFC, you'll have to add a top-level Assembly object to your project. The Assembly object is the top-level object in the hierarchy and is used to define the project. It is as subclass of Part, but it is referenced only once per project.

a = ada.Assembly('myAssembly') / p
a.show()

You'll see that the Assembly object has 2 additional methods to export to IFC and genie_xml formats (Genie XML is the format used by a Finite element pre/post-processor Genie which is part of the Sesam suite by DNV.

[x for x in dir(a) if x.startswith("to_")]

['to_aveva_mac',
 'to_fem',
 'to_fem_obj',
 'to_genie_xml',
 'to_gltf',
 'to_gnx',
 'to_ifc',
 'to_obj_mesh',
 'to_pickle',
 'to_stp',
 'to_trimesh',
 'to_trimesh_scene']