Hi,
I would like to know how we can rotate all wall and plate axes in the same direction using the
FEM design.
Or through API or Grasshopper.
I’m a bit new to both GH and the API, but I believe this should be possible—I just need a bit of guidance.
If you also have any example Grasshopper script for this, please share that as well.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Hi @Ravi
In FEM Design you have the following option to swap the faces of a shell:
And additionally, you can then change the direction of the shell in the X and Y (local coordinates of the shell):
Which will result in the following:
In GH you could do the following simple exercise:
Of course, sometimes the surfaces created in GH/Rhino may not follow the sign convention. Therefore, it’s a good idea to perform some preprocessing in GH to ensure that all surfaces have consistent orientation.
Hope this helps you a bit 
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Hi @AndreiM
Great, thank you for the help and the solution. Just one question—regarding the GH script you shared, are all the components related to the FEM-Design GH plugin tool? I’m new to this, so just wanted to confirm.
Hi @Ravi
Some of them are from FEM-Design, such as to construct a wall:
And the material database:
The rest are standard GH components used for data handling.
Take a look at the following:
You can find brief explanations and examples to help you get started with FEM-Design and GH.
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Thank you for the help.
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Hi @MarcoPelle
I came across your solution in another post (below)—it looks quite interesting. Would it be possible for you to share the script? I’m looking to use it purely for learning and reference purposes, as these tools are still quite new to me and I’m trying to build up my understanding.
Local system of walls in FEM-Design [SOLVED]
Hi @Ravi
I can definitely send you the .gh script but, as you are looking to learn, I instead suggest you to do the following:
as you can see in the image, there are components with some text on top of them. That text is the component name that you should use to set the local axis.
Where do you need help specifically?
No specific help at the moment. I’m currently trying to learn on my own, so I thought of implementing it alongside my project work—it makes it easier to understand while applying it in a real context. I’ve already started going through the basic learning materials provided on the FEM API website, but having a few practical examples would really help me identify where I might be going wrong or missing something.
So if you’re able to share it, that would be a great help. 