PC S.I calculator

[Tahaan]

I'm working on a "calculator app" to calculate the S.I / support needed for a platform with specified dimentions and material.

The calculator allows you to specify the support - eg on the corners, a room with the walls filled in, 9 pillars, 3x3 center pillar I'm working on a "calculator app" to calculate the S.I / support needed for a platform with specified dimentions and material.

Currently the total weight of the supported blocks is spread out equally between all the fully supported glue sides. In a simple case: If you have a platform 1 layer thick on 4 pillars on the corners, then you have 8 glue-sides.

This works fine for simple platforms. The calculator allows you to specify the support - eg on the corners, a room with the walls filled in, 9 pillars, 3x3 center pillar, etc.

I'm trying to add support for "braces". Braces add weight but also provide additional glue-sides. But here the calculation fails and I realise that I need to change the method by which the load is calculated.

The problem is that it appears that the weigh distribution is no longer equal between all the glue sides and I don't know how to calculate the distribution.

I imagine that a recursive formula where each block's weight is calculated based on it's material and the weight it is supporting, with that then applied as load and divided between the blocks that

supports it in turn. Here is where I have a problem: How does the game decide which blocks support which, and is the load spread out equally or is there another formula?

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I need to change the way of calculating support any case if I want to allow non-uniform platforms, eg custom platforms where not all blocks are the same material and with odd shaped holes in them, or allowing you to place load on top of the platform at specified points, etc.

I'm guessing the calculation needs to be done outwards, starting from each of the fully supported pillars, working away in a recursive manner. So assuming that that is correct, the remaining question is how is the load distributed / divided? Does distance to the nearest pillar matter?

 

[Tahaan]

Sorry, new to how attachments work on this forum, plus I'm stubbornly fighting the current forum slowness.

I am adding higher res screenshots here...

 

[Tahaan]

The above shows a platform that is at the limit of it's SI capacity. Adding anything onto this platform will cause itto collapse.

The platform is wood, 9x8, with 4 supports, one in each corner.



The calculator result for 9x8 shows an overload with the load being 340 while the max is 320. The difference between that and the above platform in-game screenshot is of course that the calculator platform is completely filled in and the one in the screenshot has a hole of 2x2,which means 4 blocks of weight 5 each, so in the screenshot the load is 320, which equals the total support provided by 4 corners having 2 glue sides used each.

That is all fine.

Here is the question:

The corner I left out is deliberately set near the edge of the platform. This wouldmake one think that there is more load on the three pillars further away from the hole. Conversely one would think that the pillar nearest to the holemight have less weight. Yet that is not the case. As well as I can tell the shades of green gets brighter to the exact center of the structure and effectively the "position" of the hole does not matter. Conversely the position of load on top of platform does not matter.

Is this true?

 

[theFlu]

Yes. Just the total weight, no lever systems or anything similar.

Neat project you got going there

 

[Tahaan]

Once I got the formulas to work, I will work on an interface that lets you create custom platforms and it will highlight issues like where you are near critical / maximum load.