Beam Tags

[kmurphy]

Hi,
I am looking for help with adding beam size information to structural members? We are a large firm working on very complex projects in 3D including football and baseball stadiums. Anyway the problem that I am trying to solve is that instead of manually tagging over a thousand beams on a plan, we want to add a custom block to the beam style so that it has attributes that can read the beam size.
I have created a standard block with the beam tag attributes and it works if I use it the old way and individually tag every beam (using the syntax :STRUCTURALMEMBEROBJECTS:SHAPEDESIGNATION)

The hope here is that we can add the Custom block to a beam style with these attributes so that everytime a beam is drawn a lovely beam tag is placed aligned to the center of the member. This looks extremely good in a demonstration with a dumb block attached to the style but is useless unless the attributes can link to the beam size?

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreiciated?
If this request is beyond the means of ADT2004 or ADT2005 then maybe it should part of the next wishlist since it would be of essential importance to structural drafters.

Thanks for your time

Ken

[tatriest]

Ken, have you had any luck with this? I just started to look into this because we are investigating a program called ADTlink by Advanced Microsystems. They convert a RAM SS structural model into ADT objects, and each beam has property data information with beam size, studs, and camber. I have not had much time to develop the attributes needed to extract the data and link it to the beam.

What programs does your company use?

Terry

[Steve_Bennett]

Try looking into using schedule tags from the design center. You can associated them with property set defs that are applied to beams, thereby inheriting beam data. Using automatic property sets you can collect all sorts of data from your structural members.

[david_peterson]

I think the problem that you may run into is how ADT link inputs that data/styles.
If you started with a beam tag that was attached to the "Standard" beam style you should be able to get the tags to come it. It has to start there.
I believe there is a standard beam tag in the content browser.
If you want the camber, studs and others to come in as well, you will need to add it to the property set data for sturctural memeber styles.
Even then I'm not sure if ADT link can export it.