Profiles in Arch structures

[yorik]

I made a little upgrade to Arch structural objects so they now have presets, and can directly be based on standard steel I/H beam profiles.
At the moment I only entered 2 types by laziness, but the idea is to have the full range of IPE, IPN and H beams available (anyone is candidate to fill the table at the beginning of ArchStructure.py? ). There is also a button to switch them from vertical to horizontal to gain time at creation.



The profile object is parametric, so we can later on extend it with other types of profiles (L, U, etc...) and also allow it to have more refined modes, such as displaying the little fillets between the flange and the webs. Hopefully this will already make steel structure building a lot easier!

[NormandC]

Wow! Cool!

[xat80]

Very cool indeed.
I update my source form the main branch but I cannot make it work, I can only create structure with a base profile (selected 2d element when creating the structure) and when editing the created structure object I only get the generic compound ui, not the Point and Structure_options UI you show here.

I just introduced myself in the dev corner forum as a possible future dev regarding steel construction: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4315&start=0

3 features That I would like is to have a line or a curve as the beam trajectory, the option the cut the extermity at different angles, and IFC import.

I tried IFC impot with sample steels structre on the web and it worked ok (just a bit slow) however the demo files for Beams from the IFC doc do not works. They are defined as a profile, a line or curve for trajectory or optionally the Boolean difference of those with 2 half-worlds for oblique cut of the extremitites.

[yorik]

That UI only appears (at the moment) at creation time, not when editing the component. And indeed you won't have it if you build a structure object on top of an existing profile. But try clicking the structure button with nothing selected, it should then work. About making structural elements curved and tapered, good idea, it might not be too difficult to implement. As for importing IFC files, I assume you're using ifcopenshell, right? Basically if some element doesn't import with the correct geometry that might be a bug in it, Thomas Krijnen, the author of ifcopenshell, might be able to do something about it... Can you point me to that demo file?

[yorik]

Ok, structural elements can now have extrusion paths! I added a Tool property that holds an object to be used as extrusion path (it must be an open wire)

You can add such an extrusion path to an existing structure by selecting the path, ctrl-selecting the structure, then press the Arch Add button.

Now for tapering I'm not sure how to proceed since variations can be a lot. But it is already possible with the arch subtractions mechanism (create an object to be subtracted, then select the subtraction, ctrl-select the structure, then press the arch remove button). I must still think of some easier way to do that...

[xat80]

Hi Yorik, great progress, very cool.

I do not see any UI at creation, it just creates a default structure that i must edit later in the properties editor. But I can make a profile using python and make a structure out of it. Maybe I am issing something, it might be resource related I am compiling out of the source tree using cmake and execute without installing, but no error or warning is displayed.

For the end cuts I would suggest 2 vector properties one for the normal of each end cut of the beam and use booleans substractions (with half-worlds as in the IFC specs). Doing boelan have the advantage of also keeping the length properties equal to the length of profile you must have before cutting the end at angles.

[yorik]

I do not see any UI at creation

That is really strange, are you sure no object is selected when pressing the button?

[xat80]

Yes I am sure. I will try to investigate further what is going on.

[xat80]

Hi, sorry for the long delay, my HDD broke and it took me a long time to buy a new one and loosing my data waas a bit discouraging but I am comming back.

I managed to get the UI by changing the preferences of the draft workbench "Modo de interface de desnho" from "Bara de tarefas" to "Visualizar tarefa"

[yorik]

Aah great, thanks for the follow-up. Now I know where the problem lies...
The draft module has that old "toolbar mode" that I always forget to update. Normally the taskmode should be the default now, but I'd better check that too...