This was my first time in an SmartGeometry, and I was impressed the high level of the participants and tutors.

Truss Optimization Trough Excel

Mi proposal for the workshop (4 days) consisted in optimize a steel truss, reducing the total weight of the steel, changing thier geometry. but constrained some nodes of the truss move in determinated zones. My original idea for the optimizatión was use Genetic Algorithms.  but in the workshop they propose me use the SOLVE program of Excel to optimize the truss.

This Image Show the description of the problem

This Image  show the relation between GC and Excel how excel Manage the Geometry into GC. Also explain where in excel is the goal (the number that we are trying to reduce). The loads in the truss is decomposed node by node using the trignometric function Sin and Cos. fortunly for me the most part of the excel spreadsheet was maded by Matthew Clark from Arup New York. and the Strategy to connect both programms was of Steven Downing also from Arup Australia.

I Adde the constraints zone into excel and connect them to the position of the points also in the spreadsheet. the code in GC is really short but very intelligent because gc is completely camptured by Excel.

In this image there are an screenshot of the Solver in excel and the truss before and after the optimization. this Images were prepared for the conference day.

This are the parameters of the solver into Excel. also there are more options that you can control like the number of the iterations, the type of the algorithm to optimize, the accurate, etc.

This is an Screenshot during my work.

This is another screenshot and show the truss and the zones where the nodes can be moved. The width difference among all the tubes depends of the section area. also calculated from the spreadsheet in excel.

The truss with differents settings and extreamly constraints in the nodes. th truss now is calculated completely in compression, the reason becasuse all the tubes are in red color.

now the truss is calculated and new loads are defined. blue colors represent that this tubes are working to the slenderness.

And here after tthe optimization.

sketches in my notebook.

Here the constraints for each node.

And this is a video of the process.