Download

This is an alpha release. It has been checked against known cases, not yet against a broad set of tests; numbers it produces are to be verified by independent means before anything depends on them. The application says so when it opens, and asks for that to be acknowledged every time. The project file, .vdyn, is provisional: the next alpha will save projects in the Engineering Sciences Common Data Format (.escdf), a public standard, and will still open .vdyn files; the first release that is not an alpha will not. Open each .vdyn once in that alpha and save it again.

Compiled packages

Nothing to set up — download, open, and the application is on your desktop. This is the one to take unless you already work in Python.

macOS Apple silicon · .dmg macOS Intel · .dmg Windows 64-bit installer · .exe Linux Portable x86_64 · .AppImage

Every release is also on the releases page, with notes and checksums — SHA256SUMS beside the files, which shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS verifies.

Example projects

Something to open on the first day: complete projects, one per workflow, with the report already generated. Every run is synthetic — a virtual test article driven through the same controller the real ones are — and the photographs are renders of the geometry.

The plate six projects · modal, random, shock, sine, system ID, transient · 42 MB The quadcopter four projects · modal, random, shock, transient · 272 MB

The plate is the data the figures on the Examples page and the guide's screenshots come from; the quadcopter is the same workflows on a model the size of a real test article. Unzip, then File → Open. They are .vdyn files, and are re-cut when the project file moves to .escdf.

Python installation

The desktop application and the scripting API are one package, so installing it gets you both — the analysis you can drive from a notebook, and the same window the installers above put on your desktop.

pip install visualdynamics

Python 3.12 or newer. python -m visualdynamics opens the application; import visualdynamics is the API the documentation describes.

Contributor installation

To work on it — fix something, try a branch, run the test suite — take the repository and install it in place, so your edits are live without reinstalling:

git clone [email protected]:visualdynamics/visualdynamics.git
cd visualdynamics
pip install -e .

That is the SSH remote, which uses the key you already push with. Over HTTPS, https://github.com/visualdynamics/visualdynamics.git clones the same thing.

To run what is on main without cloning it — a fix you have been waiting on, say — pip installs from the repository directly, and takes @ a branch, tag or commit to pin one:

pip install git+ssh://[email protected]/visualdynamics/visualdynamics.git

There is nothing to compile; git and a Python 3.12 toolchain are the whole of it. Bug reports are very welcome and I try to fix them promptly — for anything larger, write first.

What you need

• macOS 13 or newer, Apple silicon or Intel — each has its own build above. Unsure which chip? Apple menu → About This Mac.
• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.
• Linux with a desktop; the AppImage needs no install — mark it executable and run it.

The 3-D views want a working OpenGL stack, which any ordinary desktop has. Nothing here phones home on its own or needs an account — File → Check for Updates… asks visualdynamics.org only when you ask it to.