As a Computational Engineer, you write code to create sophisticated geometry. If you don't know how to code, there are many good tutorials available online.
PicoGK uses the C# language, a modern, fast, expressive and strongly-typed language that allows you to build complex algorithms using a simple syntax. If you are new to coding, don't despair! We have tried to make it as simple as possible to get started.
The easiest way to get started is to use the installers to install PicoGK on your machine.
You also need either Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code — generally speaking Visual Studio is a bit easier to set up, but has been discontinued on macOS.
Generally speaking, your PicoGK projects will look like this:
/PicoGK Example (your project folder)
Program.cs(your main execution code)- ... other files (for example the Visual Studio project file)
/PicoGK(contains the PicoGK submodule)/ShapeKernel(contains the LEAP71_ShapeKernel submodule)/LatticeLibrary(contains the LEAP71_Lattice submodule)- ... other submodules
Program.cs contains the code that executes your program. The PicoGK subfolder contains the source code of the PicoGK library. Under the hood PicoGK's C# code calls the PicoGK C++ runtime library for the heavy lifting. As many functions as possible are implemented directly in C# code, to make it simple to understand what is actually going on. Feel free to step into all functions using the debugger.
If you have installed PicoGK using the installer, you already have an example project in your Documents folder named PicoGK Example, which is ready to run.
Opening and running your first PicoGK app looks a bit different between VisualStudio Code and VisualStudio. If you are new to this, here are detailed steps:
- Running PicoGK Example on VisualStudio
- Running PicoGK Example on VisualStudio Code
Open Program.cs and you will see the following code.
try
{
PicoGK.Library.Go(0.5f, PicoGKExamples.BooleanShowCase.Task);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
// Apparently something went wrong, output here
Console.WriteLine(e);
}Inside the try block is the call to the PicoGK Library to run the task PicoGKExamples.BooleanShowCase.Task with a voxel size 0.5mm.
If something goes wrong in this task, an exception (an error) is thrown. The error will then be printed to the console output, so you can understand what went wrong.
You can run your first project by pressing the F5 key (or choosing Run). If everything goes right, this is what you see.
The example showcases a few boolean operations.
If it looks like that, congratulations, you are up and running!
You can browse to the PicoGK/Examples/Ex_BooleanShowCase.cs file and check out the code.
What you have on screen is the PicoGK Viewer. You can click and drag in the viewer to rotate, scroll to zoom, and use the cursor keys to rotate by 15º. The viewer may seem basic but has many powerful functions, including the ability to show objects in multiple colors, animate the view, save screenshots and even create timelapse animations. If you like to test this out, check out the the PicoGKExamples.TimeLapseAnimation.Task. We have animated entire gear trains and other moving objects in the viewer.
One of the easiest ways to get set up, is to simply copy the example to a new directory and rename the project file.
Alternatively, If you know how to use Git/GitHub, here are the steps to create a new app:
- Create a new C# Console Project and add it to Git
- Add PicoGK as submodule using Git, and initialize it
- Add LEAP71_ShapeKernel and other modules as needed.
- In your
Program.cs, callLibrary.Go()with the appropriate parameters
Tip
If you are comfortable with command line tools, here are all the command line steps you need to take to create a new PicoGK project.
Check out the other examples from the Examples subdirectory of PicoGK. A fun way to work your way through is by simply typing a dot behind the PicoGKExamples namespace ID, as below, and you will see all the options. Just don't forget to add Task at the end.
If you look at the code, you will see that it's super simple to create interesting things, even with the basic PicoGK functions.
If you want to seriously dive in, you should work using the LEAP 71 Shape Kernel and build your Computational Engineering Models on top of it.
Check out the main LEAP 71 GitHub page for more modules and links to articles.
If you'd like to jump into the details of compiling and developing the PicoGKRuntime, you will find a setup guide here.
If you'd like to understand what files the PicoGK installer puts on your system, check out this document.
PicoGK writes a detailed log of what is going on into PicoGK.log, which, by default, is located in your Documents folder. If you don't want us to spam your Documents folder, simply provide the path as the third parameter like this:
PicoGK.Library.Go(0.5f, PicoGKExamples.BooleanShowCase.Task, "/Users/username/Documents/LogMeHere");It must be an existing folder.
The most likely issue is that the PicoGKRuntime library is not installed on your system. Unfortunately the error message that VisualStudio shows looks like this and is barely decipherable:
If you installed from the installers, this should not happen. If you compiled yourself, either the library or one of the dependencies is missing, or the library is not signed and thus not loadable.
If your viewer looks like this, then the PicoGK Viewer did not find the textures for the image-based lighting environment. The most likely case is that your folder structure is different from what we described in the first steps of this document. PicoGK Viewer assumes that PicoGK is in a subfolder named PicoGK directly in your main project directory. If this isn't the case, it cannot find the file PicoGK/ViewerEnvironment/PicoGKDefaultEnv.zip and the scene is unlit. The easiest way to solve this is to follow the folder structure we described. Alternatively, you can provide a path to the ViewerEnvironment in a parameter to Library.Go.
PicoGK is open source and there is no support or dedicated team to answer questions. But drop us a note in the discussion section of the PicoGK repository, if you have any issues, and we will do our best to help.
