What’s New For Cast-In-Place: Your Webinar Questions Answered

You asked, we answer. On March 10th, we went live with three webinars on Tekla Structures, What's New For Cast-In-Place. We received great feedback and several questions from our audience. Thanks for that! As the questions were very interesting, and some of those repeatedly asked, we decided to return to the most relevant questions from our audience and collect the answers from our experts: Carlos Vasquez, Jyry Kuokkanen, and Sam Cummings. So, here you are:

Complex slabs, drawings, and other improvements

Q: Is the lofted slab an item? Or is it seen as a regular slab by Tekla?

A: The lofted slab is it’s own object type in Tekla, with its own properties and functionalities, similar to those of a slab. It is not an item.

Q: Is it possible to unfold this slab/wall in drawing?

A: It is currently not possible to unfold a concrete lofted slab in a drawing.

When you say polycurve, is it then according to a theoretic definition? Or is it a polyline, which is an approximation to the polycurve?

A: Polycurve construction objects work similar to polybeams in their creation, except that each handle can be moved in any direction in x, y, or z coordinates. The curves or arches that you can create between handles or sections behave as real circle arcs and line segments. FOr example, when snapping to a point along the arches, the mathematical intersection point is returned, not a tessellated vertex.

Q: Most structural slabs slope uniformly between the top and bottom faces by maintaining a constant thickness, how will this be achieved with the sloped slab tool? It appears that the slab in your example had a flat bottom, and only the top sloped. Is it possible to have the bottom slope matching the top? ie. a handle on the bottom of the slab at the drain location.

A: The feature that enables sloping slabs is a generic functionality that edits Shape’s geometry. When you edit a Shape, you edit individual faces. So in the case of a sloping slab where you want both the top and bottom faces to remain parallel (i.e., maintain constant thickness while sloping), this can definitely be done, but you need to edit each face independently. Currently, there is, unfortunately, no way of making two faces remain parallel to each other, or slope together at the same time, but it’s a good suggestion!

Q: Can a point be added without converting to an item? We want to keep slabs as Pour Objects.

A: If you want to edit a shape as shown in the webinar (adding vertices, edges, etc) you always have to convert to a shape. In that sense, when you convert a slab to an item, the slab properties will no longer be available since you are not editing an item’s shape. However, you never lose the ability to form pour objects, since both items and also slab parts create pours, as long as the material is concrete and the cast unit type is cast in place. So yes, you can definitely have a sloping slab pour object

Q: Can you only edit the geometry of a concrete slab, or can I use the sloping slab feature for other objects?

A: The feature that allows us to edit slabs is a generic feature called Shape editing, and it is generic so it can be used on any solid object in Tekla (e.g., beams, column, footings, other solid items, etc.). It is also agnostic to the material those objects have, so other materials than concrete can be used.

Q: If a part has cuts, does converting into a shape take those into account?

A: Yes, it takes those into account. When converting a part that has a cut, the converted item will not have those cuts, but its shape will have considered the cuts, and incorporated them into its geometry.

Are you still able to define your own paper sizes in the new layout manager?

A: Yes, absolutely. Even though the new layout editor allows you to easily pre-defined the paper sizes for each template, you can still add numerically input custom paper sizes.

Q: Can the new dimensions still be used with the cloning?

A: Yes the cloning can easily use the new dimensions, the tool behaves the same, check the associativity, select the dimensions and marks you want to clone, and then, window the object in the drawings you wish to clone them to.

Formwork Tools

Q: As the formwork component creation has been apparently changed and improved now, do I need to re-create all my own formwork components?

A: No, you don't need to recreate all the formwork components. The content that has been created in the past will work in the same way as it did earlier. This means that mandatory changes are not required. If the customer wishes to use the new changes, the improvements will enable a more efficient way to create content, and it will improve the performance.

Q: Has a solution been created to accurately obtain contact surface square footage on continuous radius walls and continuous poly beams? I have not found properties that provide accurate quantities for surfaces Square Footages by face of object

A: We have created a specific tool to calculate the required form face areas. The tool, Form Face Creator can be found from Tekla Warehouse. The tool understands how the concrete is poured and for example, overlapping concrete faces are automatically eliminated. Also, the tool is a powerful help to quantify especially these complex shapes that would be otherwise quite challenging.

Q: Are there any formwork drawing improvements?

A: The new drawing improvements are not only formwork specific. As usual, most of the drawing improvements are generic and benefit all drawings. Hence, improvements in Tekla Structures 2020 will help you with formwork drawings as well. For example, the performance improvements for panning and zooming, and hiding some details in distance are likely to help you with the formwork that usually contains many details.

Rebar

Q: What are the options for exporting rebar sets?

A: Rebars sets behave exactly the same as old rebar when exporting.

Q: What's the difference between the rebar license and the cast in place license?

A: Generally speaking, they are quite similar. The rebar license unlocks certain rebar-related features that are not possible in the Cast-In-Place (Construction Modelling) licenses, such as numbering of rebar, creating cast unit drawings, exporting to BVB. There is also a difference in cost. For more information on what features are available on the different license types, refer to this page.

Q: Status of Rebar sets with lofted slabs?

A: The rebar sets currently will work with any face of concrete, there are a few tools that work really well, in version 2020 is that you can detail by predefining the guidelines, you can also change the shape of the rebar to detail an inclined face as if it were flat. There are continuous developments on these types of geometry not just slabs.