A modern, SAP2000-style desktop GUI for OpenSeesPy — built for structural and earthquake engineers who want a visual modeling environment without leaving the OpenSees ecosystem.

Status: Pre-alpha. Active development. APIs and file formats will change.

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Why

OpenSees is the gold-standard nonlinear FEM solver for earthquake engineering, but its native interface is Tcl/Python scripts. OpenSees Studio adds a visual front-end so you can:

• Click to draw nodes, frames, supports, and loads on a snapped grid.
• Assign materials, sections, and load patterns through dialogs.
• Run static, modal, pushover, and time-history analyses with progress and cancel support.
• Inspect results visually — deformed shape, mode shapes, force diagrams, pushover curves, time-history plots, hysteresis loops.
• Save the model as a single .osmodel JSON file that round-trips cleanly (diff-able in Git, scriptable from Python).

Behind the GUI, the same core Pydantic model is fully usable from a script or Jupyter notebook — the GUI is one frontend, not the only one.

What works today

• Modeling — grids, nodes, frames (elastic + force-based), trusses, quads, zero-length sections, restraints, equalDOF constraints, distributed loads, ground motions (PathTimeSeries / UniformExcitation).
• Materials and sections — Steel01, Steel02, Concrete01, Concrete02, ElasticPP, Hysteretic, fiber sections (rectangular / circular patches + rebar layers), SectionAggregator, BeamWithHinges.
• Analyses — static (load- or displacement-controlled), modal, displacement-controlled pushover, transient time-history with mode-1 Rayleigh damping. Chained workflows: gravity preload → loadConst -time 0.0 → pushover or transient.
• Post-processing — deformed shape (with scale slider), animated mode shapes, axial / shear / moment diagrams, pushover curves (in display units), time-history plots, hysteresis loops, response-spectrum SRSS / CQC, snapshot + video export.
• Persistence — projects save as a single JSON .osmodel file (Pydantic-validated, round-trip-clean).
• Examples — 20+ verified examples bundled, including the OpenSees Wiki Examples-1 through Example-4 family and a fiber-section RC frame pushover. See examples/README.md.

Tech stack

Layer	Library
GUI	PySide6 (Qt 6)
3D viewport	PyVista + pyvistaqt (VTK)
2D plots	pyqtgraph
Solver	OpenSeesPy 3.5.1.12
Numerics	NumPy, SciPy, pandas
Storage	Pydantic v2 (model), HDF5 (results)
Tests	pytest, pytest-qt
Lint / type	ruff, mypy

Architecture

Strict MVVM + service layer. The core package is pure Python — no Qt, no OpenSeesPy imports — and is fully unit-testable in isolation.

views (Qt)  →  viewmodels  →  services (OpenSeesRunner, Persistence)  →  core (model)

See docs/architecture.md for the long form, including the canonical OpenSeesPy command sequence the runner emits.

Install (development)

git clone https://github.com/ogunc/opensees-studio.git
cd opensees-studio

python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate              # Windows
source .venv/bin/activate           # Linux / macOS

pip install -e ".[dev]"

Python 3.10+ is required; 3.11 is recommended. On Windows, pin both openseespy==3.5.1.12 and openseespywin==3.5.1.12 (already pinned in pyproject.toml).

Quick start — the 60-second tour

python -m opensees_studio

Then:

1. File → Open → pick examples/cantilever.osmodel.
2. Analyze → Cases → run Tip-Load.
3. Display → Show Force Diagram → component M3 → linear moment peaking at 50 kN·m at the fixed end. Component V2 → constant -10 kN.
4. Display → Show Deformed Shape → the classic cantilever curve.

For a nonlinear walkthrough, open examples/portal_pushover.osmodel, run the Push-X case, then Display → Show Pushover Curve — you'll see the elastic ramp followed by a yield plateau as the fiber-section hinges form at the column bases.

Run the test suite

pytest tests/unit          # pure-logic tests, milliseconds
pytest tests/gui           # Qt event-loop tests (pytest-qt)
pytest tests/integration   # real OpenSeesPy runs on bundled examples

CI runs lint + the non-slow subset on Linux / macOS / Windows × Python 3.10 / 3.11 / 3.12.

Roadmap

See docs/roadmap.md for the phase-by-phase plan. Phases 0–7 (modeling, analysis, post-processing) are largely done. Phase 8 (earthquake-engineering primitives — isolators, ground-motion library, IDA, fiber-section editor polish) is the active edge.

We're looking for collaborators

This project is most useful to researchers and engineers who already work with OpenSees and want a faster path from "idea" to "model" — and who would rather build that path together than alone.

If any of the following sounds like you, please open an issue or say hi:

• 🌉 Structural / earthquake engineers comfortable with OpenSees Tcl or OpenSeesPy who can spot when a feature is "almost right but not quite" — that calibration feedback is gold.
• 🧪 Researchers running pushover, IDA, or response-spectrum studies who want to validate the GUI against their hand-built scripts.
• 🐍 Python / Qt developers interested in scientific desktop apps, PyVista / VTK rendering, or Pydantic-driven schema design.
• 📚 Students who want to learn structural FEM and modern GUI architecture at the same time — example walkthroughs and tests are designed to read as documentation.
• 🎨 UX / icon designers willing to help shape the dialog set, toolbar icons, and overall visual language.

Open issues, bug reports, and reproducible test cases are just as valuable as code. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the dev setup and the architectural rules enforced in review.

License

OpenSees Studio is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (LICENSE).

Plain-language summary (not legal advice — read the license itself):

• ✅ Use it for research, education, and personal projects with no obligation other than keeping the copyright notice intact.
• ✅ Modify and fork it freely.
• ⚠️ If you distribute it, modified or not, you must release your full source under AGPL-3.0.
• ⚠️ If you run it as a network service (e.g. host a modified version as a SaaS), you must release your modifications under AGPL-3.0.

In other words: anyone is free to learn from and build on this code, but commercial forks and proprietary derivatives must contribute their changes back to the community. If your use case needs a different arrangement (e.g. a closed-source commercial license), please open an issue to discuss.

Copyright © 2026 Ozan and contributors.