Other improvements in drawings

Tekla Structures
2018
Tekla Structures

Other improvements in drawings

There are a lot of small but important new features and enhancements in Tekla Structures 2018 drawings, for example, in hole/recess symbols in complex geometries, snapping, filtering, Layout editor , welds, pattern lines, custom grid labels, and printing. Opening drawings is now much faster.

Opening drawings faster

  • It is now significantly faster to open drawings containing several recesses and openings, and several overlapping objects, such as GA drawings with 3D views.

Hole and recess symbols shown in complex geometries

  • Complex geometries, such as T-shaped holes and rectangular shapes, can now be marked with hole and recess lines.

Snapping improvements

Snap switch settings now saved in drawing mode

Now, when you activate a set of snap switches in a drawing and save the drawing, and then reopen the same drawing, or open another drawing, the same set of snap switches is still active. Previously, the snap switch settings were not saved in the drawing mode.

Snap to center of circles

In drawings, you can now snap to the center of the circles that you have created in the model by using polygon cuts. Snapping to center allows you to create dimensions more easily, because finding the center point is easy, for example. To have a snapping point in the middle of the circles, set the advanced option XS_ADD_SNAPPING_SYMBOL_TO_CIRCLES to TRUE in the Drawing Properties category of the Advanced Options dialog box. The default is FALSE. If you change the value, reopen the drawing.

Note that GA drawings do not support this because of potential problems with the performance.

Create a filter for selecting multiple drawing objects

  • When you set values in drawing filter rules, you can now select multiple drawing objects with the new option Multi-select from drawing.

    Select multiple objects in the drawing, and click the middle mouse button to finish selecting. The current values of the selected objects appear, separated with spaces, in the Value cell on the filter row.

  • Area selection is now working while you are filtering.

For more information about filters in drawings, see Create new filters.

Additional weld size for compound weld types

  • You can now enter an additional weld size in manual drawing welds for compound weld typesand. A compound weld is a combination of more than one type of weld in a single weld joint .

For more information about drawing welds, see Welds in drawings.

New command for closing the drawing mode

Now you have one more option available for closing the current drawing and returning to the model: Go to the File menu and click Close drawing mode.

If you have made changes in the drawing, Tekla Structures asks you if you want to keep the changes that you have made in the currently open drawing. In this message box, you can also mark the drawing ready for issue , and create a snapshot of the drawing.

Layout editor improvements

Add a missing drawing layout

  • When you now open Layout editor in an open drawing, and your drawing does not have a drawing layout defined, you will get a warning message with list of layouts you can select from. The tables and other layout definitions in the selected drawing layout will be applied to the open drawing. This is useful if you have deleted the drawing layout by accident in drawing properties, for example.

Improved anchoring offsets

  • The displayed accuracy of the offsets in Layout editor in the US Imperial environment has been increased.

    Layout editor now shows the drawing frame to which the templates are anchored. This is best visible in the US Imperial environment where the frame is not at the same location as the blue frame of the drawing.

Resizable Layout editor table lists

  • You can now resize the table lists vertically in the Layout editor pane. When you hover the mouse pointer over the bar that separates the Available tables and Current tables lists, an arrow is displayed and you can start resizing by dragging the bar upwards or downwards.

Scale and Rotation hidden

  • In the Layout editor pane, the options Scale and Rotation are now disabled if they are not applicable to the selected table. Earlier they were hidden. This may sometimes help when you select tables from the pane.

Improvements in custom grid labels

  • Earlier, customized drawing grid labels created with the Grid labels command were not shown for all grid lines if the lines were skewed. This has now been fixed.

  • There is a new option Align to line in the Advanced grid label properties dialog box. When you select Yes , the labels of vertical and skewed grid lines are rotated to align with the grid lines.

New pattern lines

The following pattern line types were added in version 2018 to the Common, US imperial, and US metric environments:

  • CityLimits:

  • DoubleFaceConcBarrier:

  • FreeAccessRow

  • GovernmentLine:

  • HedgeLine:

  • LimitedAccessRow:

  • SingleFaceConcBarrier:

  • TreeLine:

View settings now remembered correctly

Drawing views now remember which properties were used to create the view and show the name of the properties file in the view properties dialog box if the properties file matches the properties set in the dialog box.

New warning message for cast units

Tekla Structures now shows a warning message if you try to delete or modify the main part of a cast unit that has a drawing.

Printing improvements

There are several improvements in printing and in the usability of the printing dialog box:

  • The name of the first color column on the Line properties tab has been changed to Object color to better describe the meaning of the colors.

  • The colors are now in the same order as in other color lists for various objects in Tekla Structures.

  • Color boxes now have tooltips indicating the name of the object color, and what happens when you click the color boxes.

  • The Line properties tab is more compact so that the color controls can fit in the dialog box without the need for scrolling.

  • When you change the printing settings, and you have a preview visible, the preview is only regenerated if the changed setting affects the preview result. For example, changing the file name prefix or suffix does not trigger the preview regeneration.

  • The Print Drawings dialog box is displayed faster than before.

  • Now you can record macros in the Print Drawings dialog box.

  • To be consistent with the old printing, the line thickness of 0 width lines is no longer affected by scaling.

  • If you select Fit to paper and set Paper size to Auto , the drawing will be scaled to fit the automatically selected paper size. Previously the output was not scaled.

  • Previously, you could print without giving a file name when printing to a single file. Now you need to enter a file name to be able to print.

  • PDF reports were previously hardcoded to not embed fonts, which caused the text to appear incorrectly in some languages. Now PDF report options are read from settings files with the name report.PdfPrintOptions.xml (a settings file saved with the name report in the printing dialog box). The settings file can be located in any of the locations where PdfPrintOptions.xml files are normally searched for. This allows the Embed fonts option to be enabled for languages that require it. If no such files are present, the default hardcoded options are used.

    If you want to have PDF reports to have embedded fonts for better support for special characters or other options enabled, save the settings from the Print Drawings dialog box with the name report and move the created report.PdfPrintOptions.xml to a XS_PROJECT , XS_FIRM or XS_SYSTEM folder.

  • Previously, the Print Drawings dialog box only checked the advanced option XS_INP for line type files. This could result in different line styles in the drawing mode and in the printed output if the line type files were stored somewehere else. Now, printing will also look for the line type files in the model folder, and in the locations specified by the advanced options XS_PROJECT , XS_FIRM , XS_SYSTEM and XS_INP , in that order.

  • In the Print Drawings dialog box, the plot file name preview now shows the first underscore defined in the file prefix correctly.

  • Multiple bugs have been fixed, which has improved the printing reliability.

For more information about printing, see Print to a .pdf file, plot file (.plt) or printer.

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