Note that running DisMech simulations directly in C++ is deprecated. To use DisMech, it's suggested to use the Python bindings instead.

DisMech is setup so that simulation environments can be instantiated using a single cpp file called robot_description.cpp.

Several example of working DisMech simulations can be seen in the examples/ directory. In order to run an example, copy the example cpp file into the main directory and then compile DisMech. For example, using the cantilever beam example:

cp examples/cantilever_case/cantilever_example.cpp robot_description.cpp
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make -j$(nproc)
cd ..

Afterwards, simply run the simulation using the dismech.sh script.

./dismech.sh

Modifications to the examples can be made easily by changing the parameters shown below. If you want to run another example, simply replace the robot_description.cpp file and recompile. Users can also simply build all examples from the start. To do so, run the following:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCREATE_EXAMPLES=on ..
make -j$(nproc)
cd ..
# Make sure to run from the main directory as some examples use relative paths
OMP_NUM_THREADS=1 ./examples/spider_case/spider_example_exec

The Pardiso solver can be parallelized by setting the env variable OMP_NUM_THREADS > 1. For all the systems defined in /examples, their Jacobian matrices are small enough that any amount of parallelization actually slows down the simulation. Therefore, it is recommended to set OMP_NUM_THREADS=1 (dismech.sh does this as automatically) and see if parallelization is worth it for larger systems through profiling.

In case you want to create a custom simulation environment, take a look at the provided examples on how to do so.

Model and environment parameters such as defining the soft structure(s) / robot(s), boundary conditions, forces, and logging are done solely in robot_description.cpp to avoid large recompile times.