Upgrade from 4.0.0?

[cor.janse...@gmail.com]

Hi,

Years ago we used Chrono to simulate a machine we did develop. Now we want to work on an upgrade of the machine. And I would like to upgrade Chrono too.

But the version we used was 4.0.0. And I noticed 7.0.1 is coming out soon. So is it wise to upgrade? Or are the differences between 4 and 7 to big?

What problems can I expect?

Any advice on how to do this upgrade?

I noticed also that OpenGL is supported now. That is really great. Will the change from Irrlicht to OpenGL be a lot of work?

[Marcel Offermans]

Hello Cor,

On 26-Feb-23 10:59, cor.janse...@gmail.com wrote:
> Years ago we used Chrono to simulate a machine we did develop. Now we
> want to work on an upgrade of the machine. And I would like to upgrade
> Chrono too.
>
> But the version we used was 4.0.0. And I noticed 7.0.1 is coming out
> soon. So is it wise to upgrade? Or are the differences between 4 and 7
> to big?

Actually version 8.0.0 was released a month ago. The Git repository
history has 6.0.0 as its first release so I could not comment on how big
the differences are. Luckily physics themselves have not changed. ;)
Maybe one of the people associated with the project long-term can
comment on this a bit better.

> What problems can I expect?
> Any advice on how to do this upgrade?
>
> I noticed also that OpenGL is supported now. That is really great.
> Will the change from Irrlicht to OpenGL be a lot of work?

Personally I would not recommend moving to OpenGL support in Chrono
right now. The "best supported" visualization currently released is
still IrrLicht but right after the 8.0.0 release the first big steps
were taken to add support for Vulkan Scene Graph (VSG)
https://github.com/vsg-dev/VulkanSceneGraph and that is probably the one
to consider if you intend to migrate away from IrrLicht.

Greetings, Marcel

[Radu Serban]

Just to add to Marcel's answer: while the physics have not changed :-) there were many changes to Chrono in the last 5 years or so since we released version 4. Those include bug fixes, new features and capabilities, and API changes (sometime quite significant). I strongly encourage you to update to the latest version of the code (release 8.0.0 or even the current development branch), also because it'd be quite difficult for any of us to help you with a much older version of the code, should you have any questions.

We may be able to tell you more about the changes you'd have to deal with if you give us more details about your particular application and the modules in Chrono you are leveraging.

Finally, note the OpenGL-based run-time visualization in Chrono was never meant to be very feature-rich. Its main purpose was efficient rendering of particle systems (for visual debugging of granular dynamics simulations). I support Marcel's recommendation of looking into the new Chrono::VSG module (which would require you to use the development branch of Chrono). This run-time visualization covers now almost everything that Chrono::Irrlicht and Chrono::OpenGL provide (with the main missing piece right now being visualization of FEA meshes, although that will be implemented soon).

--Radu

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ProjectChrono" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to projectchron...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/projectchrono/c75cc240-e60a-b3d1-85c4-fc72367788c5%40gmail.com.