Installation

Note

This page is currently under construction.

To build the local Python package for SWIRL, you will first need to clone the SWIRL repository and build the underlying C++ shared object library files from source. If you are cloning a new repository, you will need to obtain all required submodules via:

git submodule update --init --recursive

SWIRL utilizes a CMake-based build framework in combination with the funtionality provided by BLT, which futher supplies unit testing functionality which may be integrated within a CI/CD testing pipeline.

To configure, build, and local install SWIRL:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make install

This will create a new local install subdirectory within the root SWIRL project directory, containing all packaged Python modules and compiled C++ shared object libraries required to import and run the Python-based examples.

To import the locally installed SWIRL package within your Python project:

import sys
sys.path.append("PATH/TO/SWIRL/install/package/")
import SWIRL

The Examples provide further illustrative cases of invocations of the library within the context of a Python workflow, potentially interfacing with OpenSees.

Changing OpenSeesPy to use a locally modified version of OpenSees

The OpenSees documentation provides instructions on how to modify the local version of OpenSeesPy that gets used when running Python scripts that import the openseespy module. The basic steps are described below:

  1. Build your local version of OpenSeesPy, following the build instructions provided in the OpenSees documentation. Within the OpenSees build subdirectory, this will produce the shared object library build/lib/OpenSeesPy.dylib. Leave this file named the way that it is (do not change the name to opensees.so). Navigate into this directory containing your new local version of OpenSeesPy.dylib, and use the pwd command to find out what the FULL/SYSTEM/PATH/TO/build/lib/OpenSeesPy.dylib is; make a note of this for use in step 4.

  2. Assuming you’ve already installed the release version of OpenSeesPy on your computer (using pip install from the PyPI), find where this version of OpenSeesPy is installed (on my Mac, it is located in /opt/homebrew/lib/python3.13/site-packages/openseespymac/.)

  3. Navigate into the openseespy (openseespymac) directory described in step 2. You should see a shared object library file named opensees.so. Do not delete/replace this file; instead, rename it to something else (e.g. old_opensees.so). If you want to revert your local modifications to OpenSeesPy, you only need to change the name back to the original name opensees.so.

  4. Within this same directory, create a “symbolic link” to your local version of OpenSeesPy.dylib via:

    ln -s FULL/SYSTEM/PATH/TO/build/lib/OpenSeesPy.dylib opensees.so

  5. Try running a Python script that imports openseespy. It should now be using your locally modified version of OpenSeesPy!

Note

On newer Macbooks using Apple silicon with the arm64 architecture, it appears that the packaged version of OpenSeesPy is built with the x86_64 architecture (resulting in errors when attempting to run Python scripts that make use of OpenSeesPy). Replacing the version of opensees.so with a locally compiled version built natively on the Mac arm64 architecture (following the steps suggested above) appears to fix this error.

Fixing errors in pyexodus version 0.1.5

The current release version of pyexodus (0.1.5) installed via PyPI produces errors when run using python3.13 (the current version of Python with which OpenSeesPy is built and executed). To fix these errors, you will need to directly modify the pyexodus source files installed on your computer. On my Mac, these files are located in /opt/homebrew/lib/python3.13/site-packages/pyexodus/. Within this folder, you will find the main pyexodus source file name core.py (this is the file that will need to be modified to fix the errors). Open this file, and replace all instances of np.string_ with np.bytes_. For example, the following line (273) in core.py:

self._f.variables[var_name].attrs["elem_type"] = np.string_(elemType)

should be replaced by:

self._f.variables[var_name].attrs["elem_type"] = np.bytes_(elemType)

There should be a total of 4 such lines in core.py that need to be modified in this way. Once you have made these modifications, save the changes to core.py, and attempt to run a Python script using python3.13 and pyexodus; it should now work correctly.