Basic Installation

The basic installation of the add-on is very simple. Download the repository as a .zip file using the Download ZIP button at the top right of the repository main page.

NOTE: please check that the current active branch is "master", unless you are an MBDyn developer or, in general, have access to the bleeding edge MBDyn's repository. The "testing" version of this addon might rely on MBDyn features that are not already committed to the current public release.

In Blender, go to File -> User Preferences -> Add-ons and then click on the Install from File... button and locate the .zip file that you have downloaded. The add-on will be shown under the Animation category. You will have to activate it in the usual way, by clicking on the checkbox on the right.

If, upon the activation of the add-on, complaints that the numpy package is not installed, please follow the instructions below to install pip, if it is not already present in your system, and then install numpy with

# pip install numpy

or

# pip3 install numpy

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Additionally, for deformable elements to be visualized correctly, you need to activate the Auto Run Python Script option in the File tab of the Blender User Preferences, as shown in the picture below.

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Optional Packages

A few optional packages are needed to enable importing MBDyn results in NetCDF format, which in turn is needed to enable the plotting of MBDyn from the Blender interface.

Linux

Fedora 22 and 23

Just install Blender from the repos (This is important, as the Blender version from the repos will work with the system version of Python, and does not come with a bundled python distribution) and install the python packages needed to support the additional features. You can do it with pip, that in turn you can install with

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# dnf install python3-pip

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For NetCDF support:

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# pip install netCDF4

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for plotting support:

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# pip install pygal cairosvg tinycss lxml cssselect

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Notice that NetCDF support is currently required to enable plotting. Other system packages might be required by pip during the installation, for example hdf5-devel, python3-cffi, libffi-devel, netcdf4-python3. Pay attention to the error messages, as you should always do :)

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS

The procedure is similar to the Fedora one. Again, this assumes that you have installed Blender from the Ubuntu repos. Install pip if it is not installed yet

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# apt-get install python3-pip

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then install the python packages. For NetCDF support

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# pip3 install netCDF4

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You might be warned by pip3 that some required libraries are not installed in your system (quite probably at least libhdf5-dev). You can do it in the usual way with apt-get or aptitude.

For plotting

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# pip3 install pygal cairosvg tinycss lxml cssselect

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Again, NetCDF support is required to enable plotting. Pip might tell you that some dependencies are not met. For example, it might ask you to install also libffi. If that is your case, you can do it in the usual way with

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# apt-get install libffi-dev

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Please be aware that I'm not totally sure that the development package is needed here: pip might be happy with just the regular libffi package.

MacOSX

This is were things get interesting. I'll just give my experience with OsX 10.9.5, Blender 2.76b and MacPorts. Be aware that YMMV, greatly, if you try other combinations.

First install the python34 port and the related pip port:

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# port install python34 +readline

# port install py34-pip

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the +readline variant is useful if you plan to also use this python version interactively from command line, otherwise it can be dropped. Now you can install the python packages with pip

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# pip3.4 install netCDF4 (for NetCDF support)

# pip3.4 install pygal cairosvg tinycss lxml cssselect

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Again, the second row is useful only if you want to enable plotting. Now you have installed everything you need. You need now to make sure that Blender bundled python distribution can see the packages. The simplest way is to make a simlink of the site-packages MacPorts folder to the one in the Blender application folder:

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$ cd /Applications/blender-2.76b-OSX_10.6-x86_64/blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.76/python/lib/python3.4

# ln -s /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/lib/python3.4/site-packages site-packages

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Windows

Not tested yet... You're welcome to do it and tell us how it went! :)