Planarize

Tekla Structural Designer
2021
Tekla Structural Designer

Overview

The Tekla Structural Designer Support Team occasionally see models with geometry issues such as entities that are very close to - but not quite - co-planar. Such small inconsistencies can cause issues with many operations, such as load decomposition and analysis, and should be avoided. Such issues rarely result from modeling directly in Tekla Structural Designer, but may more commonly occur for import of models with geometry issues from other applications.

Planarize can assist you in resolving these inconsistencies by allowing you to move nodes of not-quite co-planar entities into the ‘correct’ target plane, as selected by you.

To run Planarize, you right-click on the target grid line (the one on which entities are correctly modeled) in any view and select Planarize FRM <grid ref>

This identifies the target plane into which nodes can be moved, and opens the Planarize properties.
The properties enable you to:
  • define the tolerance (default 25mm) for entity nodes to be considered near enough to the target plane to be able to be moved into it.

  • display or hide entities already attached to, or defined in the target plane.

  • Limit to Grid Extent, by default this property is selected which restricts the length of the target plane to the extent of the grid line (see this example).
  • confirm the target plane into which nodes will be moved.

In the 3D scene view, different colors are used to distinguish between entities attached to, close to, and defined in the plane.
In this view you can select entities close to the target plane in order to move their adjacent nodes (i.e. not quite co-planar nodes) into the target plane.
  • As entities are selected they change color to indicate their adjacent nodes have moved and are now defined in plane.

Note that adjacent nodes must lie within an adjacent zone around the plane. This zone (which vertically continues to the model extents) is illustrated in the figure below.


planarized grid line
target plane
adjacent zone
width of zone = 2 x Tolerance
length of zone = length of grid line
Note: if Limit to Grid Extent unselected, zone length increases to model extents
adjacent nodes
non-adjacent node
When entities are selected, only their adjacent nodes move into the target plane, their non-adjacent nodes do not move.
Note: An example illustrating the use of Planarize to resolve validation errors is available here.

Move nodes into the plane of a grid line

To do this, run Planarize from a 2D or 3D scene view:
  1. Hover the cursor over the target grid line to highlight it.
  2. Right click and select Planarize FRM <grid ref>.

    Different colors and a legend are used to identify entities defined in, attached to, and near to the target plane.


    • Entities defined in the target plane are indicated in gray.
    • Entities with nodes near to the plane (i.e. within the tolerance) are indicated in one or more subsequent colors. The color being determined by the distance to the furthest node. These are the nodes that can be moved in to the plane.
    • The figure in brackets after each legend band indicates the number of entity nodes within the band (not the number of entities).
  3. In the Properties window set the tolerance as required.
    Note: Tolerance should typically be kept small to allow the correction of small mis-alignment errors only.
  4. Hover the cursor over a color coded entity to display its tooltip.
    The tooltip lists the entity nodes (#1, #2 etc.) within the tolerance and shows their distance from the target plane.

  5. Select the entity to move the entity nodes listed in the tooltip into the target plane.
    Note: Only the nodes indicated in the tooltip are moved from their current location into the target plane, other nodes connected to the entity but outside the tolerance are not moved.
    Note: If moving the nodes results in an entity being defined in the target plane, a new frame will be automatically created for the target plane if it didn't already exist.

Move nodes into the plane of a frame

To do this, run Planarize from the Project Workspace:
  1. Expand the Frames branch In the Structure tree.
  2. Right click on the required frame and select Planarize FRM <frame ref>.

    Different colors and a legend are used to identify entities defined in, attached to, and near to the target plane.


    • Entities defined in the target plane are indicated in gray.
    • Entities with nodes near to the plane (i.e. within the tolerance) are indicated in one or more subsequent colors. The color being determined by the distance to the furthest node. These are the nodes that can be moved in to the plane.
    • The figure in brackets after each legend band indicates the number of entity nodes within the band (not the number of entities).
  3. In the Properties window, set the tolerance as required.
    Note: Tolerance should typically be kept small to allow the correction of small mis-alignment errors only.
  4. Hover the cursor over a color coded entity to display its tooltip.
    The tooltip lists the entity nodes (#1, #2 etc.) within the tolerance and shows their distance from the target plane.

  5. Select the entity to move the entity nodes listed in the tooltip into the target plane.
    Note: Only the nodes indicated in the tooltip are moved from their current location into the target plane, other nodes connected to the entity but outside the tolerance are not moved.

Planarize properties

Item Description
Tolerance As the Tolerance is increased, more nodes become available for moving into the plane.
Attached to plane
  • On - displays entities with nodes attached to the target plane

  • Off - (default) hides entities with nodes attached to the target plane

Defined in plane
  • On - (default) displays entities entirely in the target plane

  • Off - hides entities entirely in the target plane

Limit to Grid Extent
  • On - (default) only those entities adjacent to the grid line defining the target plane are considered

  • Off - the target plane is projected to the model extents so that all entities within the tolerance are considered

Target Plane The plane into which nodes will be moved. (Pre-selected by choosing an existing frame or grid line.)
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