3d Cable Trays

[Anonymous]

We searched a lot for getting real life cable trays which we can use in our modeling project. We were able to find some 2d dynamic blocks Cable tray, Revit families with some limited functionality. Also we tried to create cable tray in AutoCAD MEP, but we gave up after some time. Lastly we tried to do this by using AutoCAD 3d objects & then giving it dynamic properties. To our surprise we were able to do this & found that by doing some twicks we can add dynamic blocks properties to 3d objects too. We are very pleased to share this with Autodesk Discussion group. Do place your feedback about this

Edited by: prashant.gholap@excelize.com on Jul 28, 2009 9:09 PM Edited by: prashant.gholap@excelize.com on Jul 28, 2009 9:10 PM

[Anonymous]

I noticed your dynamic block creations, very nice! I Made 3D flextray as individual sections so that it adds items to BOM. I also includes center supports as well as outside supports in layers. File size is large which can be a problem on some machines. So you built the dynamics in MEP 2010? Are you a telecom company?
Thanks, Wayne Lizotte

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your nice reply. At least we found somebody who can look at this & reply to it. We were very excited when we have done this & thought that we should immediately share this & get responses about what more can be done in this. So after 1 month we got our first reply from you.

We built this in AutoCAD 2009 by creating basic 3d objects & then adding dynamic properties to them. We can add dynamic properties to 3d objects by doing some tricks in rotation view. If you are interested we can share pdf file in which we can describe our steps.

We are not telecom company, we are India based firm working on Indian Projects in which we do BIM modeling, along with MEP work for clash detection.

[Anonymous]

VERY NICE. THANK YOU FOR SHARING!

I have done something similar for unistrut supports that have dynamic properties that adjust to the exact measurement between the holes on standard unitstrut.

One major thing that Autocad is lacking is 3D dynamic blocks. I know we can fake them now but to be able to rotate a dynamic parameter set in 3D would make dynamic blocks a million times more useful.

One tip, I stopped making 3D blocks out of solids and started using 3d faces instead since they can be stretched with dynamic parameters, where 3D solids can't. Instead of using an array to "stretch" your cable tray you could stretch it to exactly how long you want it to be, instead of being locked into the array increment value.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your feedback.

Yes this is good tip of using 3d faces instead of 3d solids, which gives additional control. We will try this tip on Cable Trays.

Also inbuilt facility of adding dynamic parameters to 3d objects will definitely give more power to AutoCAD. We are still waiting from AutoCAD 2006 for this feature.

[RedMan77]

Cant add to much to whats already been said. Very nice.

[Anonymous]

These are fantastic! I have created my own Ladder Flange style but not with dynamic properties. Very nice to have these items, I hope that AutoCAD sees the great response from this forum and takes action to create an actual library of these and not cable tray based off of HVAC ducts. Great job again.

[Anonymous]

Please do share that PDF you mentioned. I would love it. sorry for the late delay, it never came to me email, guess I must've had it turned off. Again, thanks!

[Anonymous]

this is what we have done for 3D cable tray dynamic blocks, was created in autocad 2010 but the blocks work for autocad 2006 also, the grip point on some is in middle at right end and some grips  are at bottom right end. thisis just the tray we have all of the other required parts.  thery are 14 blocks starting at 150MM x 100MM up to 900MM x 152MM, as always use at own risk