Organize the shape catalog view

You can organize the shape catalog view to suit your needs and ways of working.

In the Shape catalog dialog, you can show or hide property columns, or change the order of the property columns. You can also filter shapes and mark them with stars and tags.

In the Select shape dialog, you can show or hide property columns, or change the order of the property columns. You can also filter shapes and mark them with stars.

The Select shape dialog opens when you click the ... button next to the Shape box in the item properties, or in a component dialog.

The changes that you make to the dialog layout are automatically saved to the shape_catalog.settings.UI file in the ..\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Trimble\Tekla Structures\<version>\Catalogs\ folder. Tekla Structures uses the saved layout next time you open the dialog.

Show or hide the catalog ribbon

You can show or hide the catalog ribbon in catalog dialogs and selection dialogs.

You can show or hide the catalog ribbon in the following dialogs:

Rebar catalog
Select rebar
Shape catalog
Select shape

By default, the ribbon is shown in catalog dialogs, but hidden in selection dialogs.

To show the ribbon, click the down arrow at the right side of the (Home) ribbon title bar.
To hide the ribbon, click the up arrow at the right side of the (Home) ribbon title bar.

Work with property columns in the catalog view

You can organize the catalog view by showing and hiding the property columns, and by changing the order, sort order, and width of the columns.

You can organize the columns in the catalog view in the following dialogs:

Rebar catalog
Select rebar
Shape catalog
Select shape

Note:

The Star column is always visible and you cannot hide it.


To	Do this
Show or hide a property column	Click Show columns to open a list of the available property columns. A check mark in front of a column name indicates that the column is visible. To show a column, click the column name to add a check mark in front of the column name. To hide a column, click the column name to remove the check mark.
Change the order of the property columns	Drag a column header to a new location.
Change the sort order of a property column	Click the column header. The arrow symbol next to the column header indicates if the sort order is ascending or descending . To sort values by two properties and in two columns: Sort by one column. Hold down Shift and then sort by the other column.
Resize a property column	Drag the edge between this and the following column header. For example: You can also click Fit columns to adjust the widths of the visible columns so that the longest value in each column (or the column header in the shape catalog) is shown. This does not affect the widths of the columns you have manually resized.

Filter shapes

Filtering shapes helps to narrow down the number of shapes shown in the shape catalog view.

You can filter shapes in both the Shape catalog dialog and the Select shape dialog. You can use filtering together with other methods, such as sorting.

Open the Shape catalog dialog or the Select shape dialog.
- On the File menu, click Catalogs > Shape catalog to open the Shape catalog dialog.
- To open the Select shape dialog, click the ... button next to the Shape box in the item properties, or in a component dialog.
In the Filter box, type the search term or filtering criteria.
Select a group or sub-group.

Tekla Structures shows the matching shapes in the selected group.

Add shapes to the Starred group

You can add stars to important or preferred shapes, so that you can easily find these shapes later. Shapes to which you add stars appear in the Starred group in the shape catalog.

Starring is user-specific, so it is only visible to you. The starring settings are stored in the shape_catalog.settings.user.<username> file in the current model folder.

Open the Shape catalog dialog or the Select shape dialog.
- On the File menu, click Catalogs > Shape catalog to open the Shape catalog dialog.
- To open the Select shape dialog, click the ... button next to the Shape box in the item properties, or in a component dialog.
Browse or search for the shapes to which you want to add stars.
In the list of shapes, click the white star symbol in the Star column for each shape that you want to add to the Starred group.

By default, the Star column is the first column and the star symbol is at the beginning of each shape row.

The star symbol turns yellow and the shape is added to the Starred group.

To remove a shape from the Starred group, click the yellow star symbol on the shape row. The star symbol turns white again.

Add tags to shapes

In the Shape catalog dialog, you can add tags to shapes to add keywords or other metadata to the shapes.

Tags are model-specific and saved in the ShapeCatalog.Groups.User.<username>.xml file in the current model folder.

On the File menu, click Catalogs > Shape catalog to open the Shape catalog dialog.
Select the shapes that you want to tag.
In the Tags box at the bottom-right corner of the Shape catalog dialog, enter the keywords or metadata, then press Enter.

To add several tags to a shape, enter the next tag in the next tag box, then press Enter.

Each group of tagged shapes appears with the symbol under Tags in the list of groups.
Click Save to save the changes to the shape catalog.

Remove tags from shapes or delete tags

You can remove tags from shapes or delete tags when they are no longer needed.

On the File menu, click Catalogs > Shape catalog to open the Shape catalog dialog.
Remove or delete tags.
- To remove a tag from a shape, select the shape, then click the X symbol after the tag name in the Tags section in the property area.
- To delete a tag, select the tagged group, select all the shapes in the group, then click the X symbol after the tag name in the Tags section in the property area.
Click Save to save the changes to the shape catalog.