Meet Karamba3D  

Karamba3D is an interactive, parametric engineering tool that allows you to perform quick and accurate Finite Element Analysis (FEA). It has been specially tailored to the needs of design professionals in the early design phases. Karamba3D is embedded in the parametric environment of Grasshopper in the 3D modelling program Rhino 3D.  

Karamba3D has recently launched the connector for Speckle that enables a Karamba3D model to be converted to a Speckle structural model and vice-versa!

The connector was developed by Georg Lobe, a software developer at Karamba3D with a background in architecture. He is responsible for designing and implementing the platform’s interoperability interfaces and worked on the Speckle structural model exporter and importer components for Karamba3D.

In this case study, Georg used Speckle's legacy connectors. Please read more about the difference between Next-Gen (default) and legacy connectors here.

How Karamba3D integrates into Speckle workflows

Karamba3D is used by engineers in the architects in the early design phases for quick and accurate structural analysis to study various design iterations. Tapping into the power of Speckle can enhance any workflow:

Connect

A Speckle structural model can be directly pulled into various software applications for data exchange. A model from Karamba3D can be sent to other FEA Applications such as ETABS, SAP2000 and GSA for detailed calculations and code checks. Furthermore, it would be possible to create a BIM model by pulling the structural model into Revit and Archicad.

Collaboration

Collaboration becomes easier when structural model data is stored in a Speckle model. Team members can load a model iteration, make local edits, and then publish the updated version back to the cloud. This eliminates the need to share Grasshopper scripts among team members.

Opportunities of Speckle Automate

Leveraging Speckle Automate, a function was created to automatically calculate embodied carbon calculation for structures that have been designed and optimized in Karamba3D.

The Automate function matches structural data from the Speckle structural model using the Karamba3D Cconnector and a LCA database that is uploaded to a subsequent Speckle Model.

How they did it

To run automated embodied carbon calculations, Georg and the team started by converting a Karamba3D structural model into a Speckle Structural Model.

Crucial data such as the weight and volume of each element were used to accurately analyze LCA (Life Cycle Assessment). The example used for this analysis was the BESO Tower which can be found on the Karamba3D website.

In parallel, they created an Excel-based materials database that matched the material names and types used in Karamba3D. This was uploaded to a separate Speckle model within the same project to ensure clear data mapping between design and material properties.

With both models in place, they set up an Automate function in Speckle. This function cross-referenced the structural data with the LCA database and calculated the embodied carbon for each element. The result was a new model containing all the original structural elements, now enriched with LCA data but with incorporated LCA data.

This approach made it easy to iterate and update results directly from design tools, without needing to manually extract or reformat data at each step.

The Github Repo that was used can be found here: SimpleLCA (glk3d/SimpleLCA).  

What's next

Harnessing the capabilities of Speckle there are many opportunities in future development which the team is excited to further investigate:

• Tracking changes in the structural designs through diffing and version history of the models.

• Interactive Dashboards of the structural models showing analytic results, member sizes, materials and much more.

• Receiving geometry from other CAD software to be able to analyse them in Karamba3D.