Structural Connections' Tube Base Plates Anchors missing location Parameters

[Anonymous]

I am preparing Structural Connections (base plates) for use by my firm. All seem to work very well except for Tube base plates and corner base plates. The anchor bolt location parameters don’t schedule parameter values so they can be located. W shapes' anchor location parameters work great but the tubes are missing data entered in at the dialog box and don't get translated to the schedule. Am I missing something?

https://autode.sk/2UKUANt

[Judy_S]

Hi, dan.johnsonKCHZY,

I'm Judy from Revit technical support. I saw your question about the location parameters in your structural connections and will be happy to help you out. 

Thanks for the video -it was quite clear. I see that you are missing the latest updates for Revit 2020, so installing them would be the first thing I'd recommend. I'm not certain that will address the issue, but it's good to rule out missing software updates as a potential cause. 

In order to do some troubleshooting, it would help if you'd be willing to share the model from the video with me so I can have a look at how it's set up. Can you include one of the W shapes in the model so that I can compare the two? If you'd like to send me the model, I'll send you a PM with a link to a folder you can use to send me the file. 

Thanks, and looking forward to hearing from you!

Best,

Judy_S

[Anonymous]

Hi Judy. Thanks so much for your response. I have updated my Revit to 2020.2 (20.2.11.3) and the problem still exists. I'd be happy to share my model - there are W shapes in the model. In the "W & HSS SHAPES ANCHOR BOLTS" schedule you will see what I'm talking about. The values that you set when you edit the Tube base plate connection type simply don't come into the schedule. Let me know how to share it and I'll send today.

[robertwmerriman1]

@Anonymous 

For the base plate you show in the video I would use the normal base plate macro not the tube base plate macro, you can still get the 4 anchors as you require then it should schedule like the W columns?

See screenshot below where I have applied just the base plate macro to the tube, the other 2 variations shown use the tube base plate because the anchors are positioned differently or in a circular pattern. I think the issue you are getting is becuase of this the anchor setout in the tube base plate are not the same as the base plate macro.

[Anonymous]

That works but.... the macro isn't designed to do that. It still displays a wide flange in the preview and in the dialog sketches and references distances and dimensions from flanges or webs. A square tube (or HSS in Canada) needs it's own macro, which it has but it's got a glitch as I've mentioned previously. This is useful for a hack or a workaround but I'm sure Autodesk is still interested in correcting the root issue.

[robertwmerriman1]

Hi @Anonymous 

I dont disagree with you the the base plate macro shows the W shape and references the we and flanges, the way the tube base plate macro works though is it creates seperate groups of bolts, so on your example you get 2 groups of 2 which is wjy I think the schedule isnt working as you want.

The base plate macro creates one group of 4 so will give you what you want. These connections on revit have been taken out of Advance Steel and put into Revit, they have been in Advance Steel for at least 15 years and this is the way the two base macros have been set up, see screen shot below showing the groups

The W section has a 2 flanges and web, the HSS has 2 flanges and 2 webs so the options in the Base Plate macro will still give you what you want.

[Anonymous]

I understand, but to locate anything whether it's 2 groups or 1 group you still need an x and a y to locate them. This is only giving me the x or the y in the schedule, never both. Something somewhere is not translating data generated in the structural connections dialog to the schedule. I don't want to just use what works because I am developing a standard for the company - developed standards should ideally not include workarounds or special tricks to use. People just lose faith in the software. I can afford to wait for the correct solution (provided it's not months away) because I understand that an issue like this is likely a programming issue.

[Judy_S]

Hi,  dan.johnsonKCHZY,

Just wanted to let you know I have your model and am still working on this. I'll be in touch next week with an update. Thanks for your patience while I work on this. Have a good weekend!

Best,

Judy_S

[Judy_S]

Hi, dan.johnsonKCHZY, 

I have some news for you: those distances are coming from the bolt/anchor pattern parameters. These can be checked in Property Manager when selecting some bolts (see screenshot). The edge distance, for example, is the distance from the bolt center and the edge of the rectangular pattern (the pattern edge was defined when creating the bolts by clicking on the object face). These edge distances are 0 by default at creation and can be adjusted afterwards. Also, if the bolt/anchor pattern is part of a connection, it will still have these parameters assigned to it and, most cases, the edge distances will be 0. 

Let me know if this helps! 

Best,

Judy_S

[Anonymous]

Hi Judy, I realize there should be some value that should be 0, but for the Tube Base Plate Connection specifically, I believe there are too many 0's. The W base plate connections work fine and there are no problems. For ANY anchor bolt there needs to be an X and a Y in the same line of the Anchor bolt values - take HSS RE 305A1 - reading along that same line you get:    0     220     0     220     0     0. Whichever values you enter in the dialog, not enough of them appear in the schedules in order for whomever is reading the drawings to locate them on site or in the shop or wherever. The values are missing and not getting transferred to the schedule from the dialog.

[Judy_S]

Hi, dan.johnsonKCHZY,

So sorry for the delayed response - the person who was helping me on this was out of the office. Here's the latest information: The distances for the anchors in the Tube Base Plate connection are controlled from the connection properties, in the “Upper bolts” and “Side bolts” tabs. The edge distances are 0 because this is how they were defined when this connection was created (originally in Advance Steel, then inherited in Revit).
There can be a confusion because there are some Edge distances in the connection parameters which do not coincide with the edge distances from the anchor parameters. The edge distances from the connection parameters can be enabled if in “Side layout” you choose “edge distances” instead of “centered”. When altering the edge distances from the connection (which relate to the base plate edge), these are translated to the anchor pattern distances, where edges remain 0 (this is most probably how these were defined originally) and the other distances (intermediate and length) are updated to match the values.

I hope this is helpful! Let me know if you have more questions.

Thank you!

Best, 

Judy_S

[Anonymous]

That was not helpful in the least, all due respect and I don't believe you understand what I'm saying. I understand which parameters are which - I am not using edge distance although if I were, the problem I'm trying to get through would be the same. This issue is a programming issue - it can't be fixed by doing something differently in Revit. There is a missing parameter - nevermind values reading "0" - I was trying to illustrate that there are not necessarily too many zeros, more that there are not enough meaningful non-zero values. Please nevermind the zeros.... You need an X and a Y value to locate something in plan. Revit doesn't give an X and a Y. It only gives an X OR a Y (never both) depending which values you enter in the dialog. This is a problem PURELY SPECIFIC to the HSS Tubes Structural Connection Macro.

[Judy_S]

Hi, dan.johnsonKCHZY.

I'm sorry this has been frustrating for you. I'm not terribly familiar with steel connections so I've been passing your comments and questions on to one of the developers, who has been providing the information. Your last post helped to clarify the issue, and I hope the information I have today is helpful. Here's the latest response to your comments (and a video as well):

"I believe the cause of the behaviour the user is describing is the fact that the Tube Base Plate connection (used for circular hollow section columns) has a different way of defining anchor patterns, compared to the Base Plate connection (used for W columns). By default, Tube Base Plate uses 4 different patterns of anchors of 1x2 anchors each while Base Plate only uses one pattern of anchors of 2x2 - keep in mind, these are default values, the user is able to change the number from 1x2 to 1x3, 1x4 etc. from Tube Base Plate connections properties (Upper bolts and Side bolts) and from 2x2 to 3x3, 2x3 etc. from Base Plate connection properties.
This division of the anchors from a connection to multiple patterns can be checked by doing selections using Tab key, so instead of selecting the whole connection, the anchor patterns can be selected individually (see video). After doing so, you are able to check the Properties palette for parameters of the individual anchor patterns, where you will see the same distances as in schedule.
For the Tube Base Plate case, due to the fact that the anchor patterns have 1 row of anchors on one side, the total length and intermediate distance on that side will be equal to 0. So, yes, for this case, you will only have an X distance, and a Y distance of 0 due to the fact that it's a single row on the Y direction. I hope this makes sense. I also hope the video could shed some light.
All this being said, I do recognise the fact that the way this connection has been defined in terms of anchor pattern divisions could be confusing and it could be worth re-analysing by the development team in order to make it more intuitive, easy to configure and maybe help having more useful anchor distances in schedules. So, maybe an Idea station entry could be added by the user on the Revit forum with this case so that it gets picked up by decision factors for Revit steel roadmap and possibly prioritised for future versions."

Please let me know if this explanation helps. If not, it would be great if you can send me a model that I can share with development so we can look at your dataset and make sure we're all talking about the same thing. I'll make arrangements for you to send me a model if need be.

Thanks, and let me know what you think!

Best,

Judy_S 

[Judy_S]

Hi, dan.johnsonKCHZY,

I was wondering if you've had a chance to read my latest post. Did that help? Do you have any followup questions or comments? Let me know if there's anything else I can do. Thanks!

Best,

Judy_S

[Anonymous]

I will try to explain this in another way. In the attached photo, I have set up an example that should populate parameters in the schedule, as you can see, most values still show as 0 which is totally wrong. I am only using "Upper Bolts" - the "Side Bolts" are set to 0. The 'Intermediate Distance on Side 1' should read "80" and it does not. All edge distance values are filled out in the dialog, however when I set the "Horizontal or Vertical Layout" to "Edge Distances", all the edge distance values in the schedule are 0, which is wrong. The values set in the "Tube Base Plate" dialog box do not translate to the parameters in the connection. All of the parameters should have a value but they all read "0". This is wrong. This is a bug in the software pure and simple. 

I am not getting confused with there being 2 groups of anchors with Tube Base Plates. There should be NO values that read 0, because the values have been set in the dialog to non zero values. It's just a bug in the software that needs to be addressed. All values in other connections come into the schedules perfectly, Tube Base Plates has a glitch. This just needs a coder to investigate it. Is it possible to send this to someone in the appropriate department?

[Judy_S]

Hi, dan.johnsonKCHZY and anyone else following this discussion!

I've been working with development to understand why these parameter values appear as 0 in Revit schedules and have some details to share with you. The bolts are a sub-element of the connection and their arrangement is created using different rules than an engineer might use to locate the bolt holes, so the schedule doesn't display the information as you might expect it to.

Development has an improvement request to change this functionality in their backlog, though I can't tell you when or if this might be changed. This article will be updated whenever there is any change in the status of the improvement request, so if you're interested in this issue, you might want to bookmark it: Anchor bolt location parameters of tube base plates and corner base plates only show 0 in schedules. 

If this is a feature that you'd like to see changed in Revit, I encourage you to post the idea on the Revit Ideas page.  This is the best way to get your ideas to the eyes of the development team, who have already incorporated a number of customer ideas into the software, with others under consideration. 

I hope this is helpful!

All the best,

Judy_S

[schertz1]

Has the issue of creating a base plate connection for HSS column shapes been solved yet.