Pragmatic Musculoskeletal Modelling

This handbook sets you up with an open-source software environment and describes using it to do interesting things with musculoskeletal models.

The OPynSim team maintains this handbook’s content here (contributions welcome). In contrast to OPynSim’s documentation, this focuses on getting things done using any combination of open-source projects from the wider ecosystem. Therefore, while some tasks may indeed use OPynSim, others may use NumPy, OpenSim, OpenSim Creator, etc. when that’s currently the most pragmatic solution.

Handbook Structure

This handbook is structured into three sections:

• Setup: Installing/configuring a computer for musculoskeletal modelling.

• Concepts: General concepts/techniques that apply to many musculoskeletal modelling problems/tasks.

• Guides: Guides that focus on solving a specific problem/task.

Are you new to Python scripting and/or musculoskeletal modelling? We recommend that you first set up Core Software and configure an IDE such as PyCharm or Visual Studio Code to use it. After that, read through Core Concepts before tackling a specific guide. This way, you will encounter fewer technical issues and have a rough idea of what’s going on.