6.1.5 Parametric stent geometry

An inherent feature of script-based modeling is the possibility of easily generating lots of variations on the original geometry. This is a huge advantage for parametric analyses and illustrated in Figure 6.6: these wire stents are all created with the same script, but with other values of the parameters

and $\beta$ . As the script for building the wire stent geometry is defined as a the DoubleHelixStent class in the (WireStent.py) script, it can easily be imported for e.g. this purpose.

**Figure 6.6:** Variations on the wire stent geometry using the DoubleHelixStent( $De,L,d,nx,\beta$ ) (DHS() class.

from examples.WireStent import DoubleHelixStent

for i in [16.,32]:
    for j in [6,10]:
        for k in [25,50]:
            stent = DoubleHelixStent(i,40.,0.22,j,k).all()
            draw(stent,view='iso')
            pause()
            clear()

Obviously, generating such parametric wire stent geometries with classical CAD methodologies is feasible, though probably (very) time consuming. However, as pyFormex provides a multitude of features (such as parametric modeling, finite element pre- and postprocessing, optimization strategies, etcetera) in one sinlge consistent environment, it appearss to be the obvious way to go when studying the mechanical behavior of braided wire stents.