Truss tower supporting exhaust gas chimney

[DDM]

I tried to reproduce in FreeCad a project designed a couple of years ago with standard 2D cad process.
It's a truss tower supporting an exhaust gas chimney.
The tower has a concrete footing supporting two truss structures. There is a bolt-connection between the two steel parts. The lower steel element is anchored in the footing with anchor bolts.

In FreeCad I used:
1) Arch workbench: lean concrete, footing, gruot, rebars
2) Part workbench: base elements for steel elements (vertical angles, diagonals, transversals, anchor bolts and plates). Massive use of compound to assembly main elements (lower and upper truss structures)
3) Draft workbench: move/copy to position elements in the model, arrays to repeat elements in the space
4) Sheetmetal workbench: to bend light elements to support chimney
5) BIM/Fasteners workbench: bolts connection

I found very useful the macro "HighlightCommon.FCMacro" to execute a clash detecion of the model.
I was unable to create a BOM of the fasteners because the bolts I inserted in compunds/array aren't counted by the tool of the fasteners workbench.

Comments to suggest better procedures are very appreciate,
Thanks, Marco

OS: Windows 10
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.18.16110 (Git)
Build type: Release
Branch: (HEAD detached at upstream/releases/FreeCAD-0-18)
Hash: f7dccfaa909e5b9da26bf50c4a22ccca9bb10c40
Python version: 3.6.6
Qt version: 5.6.2
Coin version: 4.0.0a
OCC version: 7.3.0
Locale: Italian/Italy (it_IT)

[bitacovir]

Very well done!!
A great example of a cross workbenches workflow. This is the real potential of FreeCAD.
I did not know the "HighlightCommon.FCMacro" This macro must be included in the BIM workbench.

[Kunda1]

@DDM This is awesome! And the explanation/breakdown was appreciated.

I was unable to create a BOM of the fasteners because the bolts I inserted in compunds/array aren't counted by the tool of the fasteners workbench.

Please open a ticket on the fasteners GitHub repo regarding this, if you don't mind?
https://github.com/shaise/FreeCAD_Faste ... is%3Aissue

Edit: I also added a ticket to BIM workbench about the Highlight macro
https://github.com/yorikvanhavre/BIM_Wo ... /issues/23

Edit2: Ticket opened in Fasteners WB
https://github.com/shaise/FreeCAD_FastenersWB/issues/50

[bitacovir]

Edit: I also added a ticket to BIM workbench about the Highlight macro
https://github.com/yorikvanhavre/BIM_Wo ... /issues/23

In many consulting offices that work with BIM, clash detection is part of their service of projects/technical documentation review.

[DDM]

Thanks @bitacovir, @Kunda1 for replies

Here the link to HighlightCommon.FCMacro...

https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD-macr ... er/Utility

Please open a ticket on the fasteners GitHub repo regarding this, if you don't mind?
https://github.com/shaise/FreeCAD_Faste ... is%3Aissue

Done...

[bernd]

wow very cool. Did you use https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Macro_BOLTS or https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Flamingo_Workbench ?

[DDM]

Hi @Bernd,

I started with flamingo but after a while I came back to part/part_design and draft (arrays) tools because the geometry of the tower was very simple and I could manage the elements with arrays. I started with part elements based on sketches (L70x7, L80x8...) then I cloned the parts, moved on the right position and replicated the clones with the array tool.
For example, for the vertical elements I created the single angle and then I repeated it with polar array around the center of the tower.
I used compound to group main assemblies, then I created arch/structures based on the compounds. At the end I assigned the material to the entire structure. I found compounds very useful to calculate the weight of the main parts of the elements, see attached file from a spreadsheet inserted in techdraw..

I didnt' use the macro_bolts, I will try...

Thanks for suggestion,
Marco

[bernd]

I found compounds very useful to calculate the weight of the main parts of the elements, see attached file from a spreadsheet inserted in techdraw..

Would be cool if we could get a real material bill for each cross section ... one day we will ...

[Kunda1]

@DDM Have you seen @thschrader's work on the forum?
Ex. https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=35452

CC thschrader

[DDM]

Yes @kunda1, I studied @thschrader's work and mostly @yorik'developments before starting to design structures in FC and I found their works very usefull...

@Bernd...BOM can be based on the compound that are similar to "assemblies" of the commercial softwares. I am thinking of this procedure (mainly for steel structures):

1) Design the basic parts (part, part design for plates, anchor bolts, for beams and columns using Arch/BIM workbenches)
2) Create stuctures with arch workbench and assign material
3) Group the arch/structures in compounds and assign al label to the compound (CL001 for columns for example).
4) Rename all elements of the compound (CL001_PT001, for a plate in the compound CL001)
5) Count the number of elements in the compound only if is assigned a material to the part (so it is a real part, not a construction part)
6) Check if the compound is in an array o cloned (for example many columns in a projects repeated with an array)
7) Generate the BOM for the compound and for each elements in it considering arrays and cloned objects based on the compound...

What do you think?