soffit profile

[hernan825]

Good morning, I am trying to model this type of bridge, but when changing the variable section, the program sends me the following error as I can solve it?

regards

jorge bolivar

[dave_geeves]

Hi,

When you define the section of the beam (I assume that it has been imported from a CAD file) you must specify which line segments represent the varying depth soffit.  To do this yo must open up the section definition form and then in the graphics window you left click twice (not double clicking but two separate clicks) on the lines you wish to define as the soffit. The first click changes the line to a dotted line, representing a continuous face, and the second click changes the line to be bold red representing the soffit.

I hope this helps and if this provides you with the correct solution then  please mark this post as a solution so that others can find it more easily.  Thanks

Kind regards

Dave Geeves

[dave_geeves · Accepted solution]

Hi Jorge,

Further to my last reply I have downloaded and extracted your data file for further testing.  It certainly seems that defining the soffit as I described before for the already defined three spans does not work every time and is somewhat temperamental.  The procedure I normally adopt for these multi span beams, which seems to work ok, is as follows.

• When defining the beam start off with just one span in the beam definition - say span 1 for your beam and specify the span length and number of segments
• Define the sections in the normal way for that one span.  However, it is important to define the section at the lowest soffit point (ie the deepest section) as the soffit profile only accepts positive (upward) offsets. If the sections have been defined from a user library I find it is best to  change them to "User Defined" section as they seem to be more robust, which is easily done by simply changing the "components" field in the define sections form to this type.
• The lines in the section shapes can then be defined as soffit lines as I described in my previous post.
• Back in the beam definition form change the number of spans to 3, which automatically uses span 1 definition in the additional spans (including the soffit definition).  Edit the span lengths as required and the number of segments as well as the section positions if multiple sections are used.
• The soffit profile can then be applied one span at a time to give the appropriate elevation profile.

I have run through this procedure with your model  by extracting the section shapes to sxf files (I don't have the ser library file), modifying them so that they represent the deepest part of the beam and creating a new beam in the way described above.  I haven't attached my data file as I am using the 2019.1 version and I notice from your data file that you are still using the 2018 version so you will not be able to open my file.  I hope this helps

Kind regard

Dave Geeves

[markshmitd]

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