Plugins

This section describes how the plugins are coded. For information about how to use the plugins, please see “How to run using cae”.

Plugin registration commands

The plugin registration commands are located in the top-level plugin folder, in the file rollover_plugin.py. This file must be available to Abaqus. One option is to specify plugin_central_dir in the abaqus_v6.env file. Another is to move the file to %HOME%abaqus_plugins on Windows and ~/abaqus_plugins on Linux. Neither option is great. plugin_central_dir is limited to one entry, hence multiple locations are not possible. The second option require code to be copied outside the repository, hence loosing the version control.

Plugin commands

The commands called when plugin buttons are pressed are given in the file rollover/plugins/commands.py. This file is similar to the scripts in the scripts_abq folder.

Plugin form design

For setting up rail, wheel, and rollover simulation, several user inputs are required. Forms are used for this purpose, and these are coded using Abaqus’ GUI codes. Parts that are re-used between different forms are put in rollover_gui_utils.py, and the specific forms are coded in *_form.py. All located in rollover/plugins.