Showing concrete parts in drawings using advanced options

Not version-specific

Tekla Structures

Environment

Not environment-specific

Introduction
Before Tekla Structures 19.0, all concrete parts were shown similarly in drawings. Users could control whether the lines between touching concrete parts were shown in drawings using the following advanced options:

These options would only affect lines between touching parts, as shown below:

"Touching" parts

"Non-touching" parts

The touching beams could belong to the same cast unit, or belong to the same phase. In either case with the above advanced options set to FALSE, the lines shared by these parts would not be shown in drawings. The beams would look like one continuous structure:

In Tekla Structures 19.0, continuous concrete and pour features were introduced. These two features are enabled using the advanced option XS_ENABLE_POUR_MANAGEMENT=TRUE.

With pour management enabled, concrete parts which are of Cast in Place (CIP) type, and which share the same material and pour phase, would always form a pour and be shown as continuous in model view and drawings.

How do these advanced options affect parts from Tekla Structures 19.0 onward?

The flowchart below explains how the advanced options mentioned in the Introduction affect 2 parts that are touching.

The flowchart poses 3 scenarios:

All parts are CIP.
All parts are precast.
Interacting parts are CIP and precast.

For all CIP parts, if XS_ENABLE_POUR_MANAGEMENT=TRUE, the parts are in continuous concrete so therefore, unless they have clipping errors (see definition below), they are not affected by any other advanced option, and internal lines are never drawn. If XS_ENABLE_POUR_MANAGEMENT=FALSE or if there are clipping errors, then CIP parts are treated similarly to precast parts.

For all precast parts, they are directly affected by the advanced options XS_DRAW_CAST_PHASE_INTERNAL_LINES and XS_DRAW_CAST_UNIT_INTERNAL_LINES.

If the interacting parts are of different types (CIP and precast), then XS_ENABLE_POUR_MANAGEMENT is checked first. If this is TRUE, all internal lines are drawn. If FALSE, then both parts are treated similarly to precast parts.

*Clipping error: A clipping error refers to a situation when some lines are erroneously shown inside continuous concrete. One simple example is shown below. Two beams are modeled touching the edges of a column. The lines indicated by the yellow arrows should not be shown since the 3 parts should be in continuous concrete. These clipping errors are also reported in the Session history.

The flowchart shows that whenever there are clipping errors, CIP parts are treated as precast parts and they are affected by the advanced options mentioned in the Introduction.

Note! Since Tekla Structures version 21.1, you can show pour objects in GA drawings instead of cast-in-place parts. If you are interested in showing pours and their properties, this is the preferred option to use.

For more information, please see Pours in drawings.