- A new property was added to the ViewObject of Structures, called "NodesType". It can be "Linear" (default) or "Area".
- Arch structures can have not only linear nodes, but also planar nodes. For this, 1) There must be at least 3 vectors in the "Nodes" property of the object, 2) the "NodesType" property of their ViewObject must be set to "Area".
- When the nodes calculation is automatic (that is, if you never touched them manually), when setting the Role property of a structure to "Slab", it will automatically become a planar node (there will be more than 3 vectors and the NodesType will be set to "Area").
- When editing a structure object (double-click), a couple of new tools are available in the task view: 1) reset the nodes to automatic calculation, in case you modified them manually, 2) edit the nodes graphically, works the same way as editing Draft wires (in fact it's the same tool that is used), 3) extend the nodes of the edited object until it touches the node of another object, 4) make the node of this object and another one coincide and 5) toggle the display of all nodes of all structural objects of the document on/off
Now, next on the TODO list would be: Now, what do we do with that? I had thought of 1) exporting to pybar and 2) exporting to IFC. I believe for IFC, we could export the nodes "as is". I'm not sure pybar is still an interesting/useful option, seeing the development of FEM. But maybe we could start thinking of interacting with these nodes from FEM now...
Any more input/ideas from people who understand analytic models better? (*hust* bernd *hust*)