Bug Fix for Meshes with Duplicate Plate Names

• Bug fix for merging duplicated plate names when using models with multiple meshes.

Bug Fix for Physical Member Point Loads & Mesh Improvements

• Bug fix for point loads at the ends of physical members. These point loads were erroneously being applied at the end of all segments of the physical member. This error was introduced with the new physical member feature late last year. Prior to that this error did not exist.
• Improvements to plate meshing: (1) Rectangular meshes now automatically renumber nodes and elements to avoid duplicating names that are already in the model. This feature is only available for rectangular meshes at the moment. For other types of meshes you'll need to manually specify the start node and start element for numbering. (2) Meshes also now automatically stay in sync with the model. A node moved in the model will automatically reflect back on the mesh. Changes to elements in the model will automatically be reflected in the mesh. The program used to lose track of this. Once the mesh was generated it was "one and done" and no more.
• Started documentation on readthedocs. Cleaned up some docstrings in the process. Lot's of work still to do here.

Materials, Meshing, and Hints

• WARNING: This version will require reworking your models to incorporate Materials. Be prepared to rework your models before you upgrade. The examples have all been updated to show you how to do this.
• Added Material definitions. This does not change Pynite's behavior much, but it prepares the way for future features.
• Greatly simplified the process of meshing plates/quads. Meshes can now be generated directly from the FEModel3D object.
• Added data types to the many dictionaries storing data in the FEModel3D object. Most development environments will now offer hints when using these dictionaries directly. This makes accessing the results you're interested in more intuitive.
• Simplified internal code for finding unique names for objects.

Member Result Arrays

Member plot results can now be returned as arrays. Thanks to @connorferster for this feature.

Bug Fixes for Rotational Springs and Screenshots

• Bug fix for rotational springs. Exceptions were being thrown due to an inconsistent variable name.
• Cleared out old branches from the repository that were no longer being used.
• Updated CI to check against python 3.10 and 3.11. Removed CI for python 3.6 as it's no longer supported by the latest version of github actions.
• Subtle changes to the logo to make it look a little more "pythonic".
• Bug fix for rendering screenshots. The ability to interact with the render window was being disabled after the first screenshot had been taken, forcing subsequent screenshots to use the same view as the first one.

Physical Member Bug Fix

Bug fix for member distributed loads on physical members. Added a unit test to check for this error going forward. This bug only affected physical members (new as of v0.0.67) that had distributed loads and internal nodes.

Physical Members

• Added physical members. Members now automatically detect internal nodes and subdivide themselves and their loads.
• Refactoring: deprecated old method names for member results. You may now have some errors show up if you still try to get member results using the old method names.
• Bug fix for P-Delta analysis. Global displacements were correct, but member internal forces were neglecting the geometric stiffness matrix. The impact of this bug was minimal, since the strain induced by correct global displacements was still being considered prior to this update. You should see a slight change to member P-Delta results.
• Code simplification for P-Delta analysis.

Faster Linear Solver for Simple Models

• Code simplification and bug fix for merging duplicate nodes.
• When nodes are merged, support conditions for the deleted node are now assigned to the remaining node.
• Added a linear solver for faster analysis of simple models. If you don't need P-Delta analysis or tension/compression-only analysis this solver saves time by only assembling the global stiffness matrix once.

Rendering improvements & bug fixes

v0.0.65

• Improved the merge_duplicate_nodes method. It seemed to be working, but it was hard to follow, and there may have been cases where it didn't work as expected. Simplified the code for this method to make it clear what it was doing, and to make it more efficient. Added comments explaining each step.
• Screenshot size is now adjustable when rendering.
• Fixed a bug for RectangleMesh where it could not be used repeatedly.
• Refactoring: changed Name to name throughout code. For example, Node3D.Name is now Node3D.name.
• Fixed obsolete method names that had not been updated.
• Scalar bar text size can now be controlled. It had strange behavior before. It would change with the window size (until the window size was too small).
• More work on the new Renderer class. This class is being built to give the user more control over the appearance and behavior of renderings.
• Bug fix for nodal springs applied in the 'RY' and 'RZ' direction. Exceptions were being thrown in some cases.

`add_mesh` Bug Fix

• One more bug fix for the add_mesh method.