Structural Desktop News-Letter

Structural Desktop News - Letter

April 2008

Filler

Now that you have invested your time in creating, analyzing, and designing your analytical model it would be a shame to just throw that work away and start your contract documents from scratch. Structural Desktop gives you the tools to turn your analytical model into contract documents in a quick and efficient manner. Any STAAD, RISA, GT STRUDL, or SAPS2000 users can easily bring their fully-designed analytical model directly into AutoCAD using Structural Desktop. Member and element geometry, properties, and constants are imported as fully intelligent objects. They “know” where they are and what they are. If you created the model in Structural Desktop, you can recover all your layer selections and AutoCAD settings from your hold file. This process works as follows: · Create your original model in AutoCAD and, using SDT, assign member properties and sections. Use layering to isolate groups of members which makes it easy to view only those members or elements that you are working with at any given time. · Save your Structural Desktop Model as a Hold file, then create your analytical file. · Using your analytical program, complete your design and save the file. · Close your analytical program and reopen Structural Desktop in AutoCAD. · Using the right-click menu, go to [Structural Desktop], [File] then go to your STAAD, RISA, GT STRUDL, or SAPS2000 to [Load] the input file. · Right-click again to use [Structural Desktop] , [File] and then click [Recover Hold File Data]. · Select the hold file that you saved prior to beginning your design. · Loading the analytical file imports a 3-D model into Structural Desktop that has any changes you made while designing. [Recover Hold File Data] does not change sections or joint locations, but does re-assign your layers and merges additional information from the older hold file into the new model. The Analytical model is centroidal and your drawing model is not. In order for your model to represent the real world, you will need to apply offsets and top of member adjustments. These tasks can be made easy by taking advantage of AutoCAD’s layers and Structural Desktop functions for adjusting members. Structural Desktop offers a variety of commands to adjust the model that can be applied to large numbers of members at once. The many capabilities of AutoCAD such as the move command, trim, extend, and the various snaps and grips are also available. Once your model is adjusted, you are ready to create contract documents. You can extract 2-D plans, elevation drawings, 3-D drawings, and your bill of materials from the model. This process works as follows: · Turn off any layers that inhibit easy selection of the desired members or elements. · Right click to [Structural Desktop], [Create 2D Drawings], and [Create Plan View], [Create Elevation – XZ], or [Create Elevation – YZ]. · Select the members and/or elements that you wish to represent on your drawing and then press [Enter]. · A “DWG” drawing, with all the members and elements annotated, is created in a separate window which can be saved to your designated directory. This is an important tip: we recommend that when using drawings created by Structural Desktop, you use x-reference to incorporate your structural drawings into your final, annotated drawings. Your structure should be x-referenced into your drawing containing your notes, details, and dimensions. This makes dealing with changes much easier as you move to complete a project. If a column line is moved, you can adjust your model, easily extract a replacement drawing for an elevation or plan, replace the structure-drawing x-referenced in your final drawing, move one dimension, and the change is complete. Gridlines can be added to your model within Structural Desktop and these gridlines will appear on all output drawings with dimensioning. Structural Desktop gives its users the ability to create contract documents from their analytical model in a quick and efficient manner. SDT allows engineers to make better use of their time by not having to spend precious time recreating the structure line by line in AutoCAD but instead importing the 3-D model from the analytical program directly into AutoCAD. Creating the structure from your model is a way of leveraging your investment in your design work and establishing a basic drawing that you have approved before your draftsman/designer comes into the picture to complete the drawing. If this program sounds like something that could make your engineering process more efficient, try it today. Go to www.structuraldesktop.com/downloads/ fill out your information in the Structural Desktop demo, click “Try it Now” and download the appropriate program for you depending upon what version of AutoCAD or ADT your running. You can run the full version of the program 50 times for free.

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