Coordinate systems and work planes

Management of current work plane

In most practical cases it makes sense to set the current work plane so that the geometrical calculations are straightforward. The following code example shows how to set the work plane parallel to the beams local coordinate system. This ensures that the behavior and output of the application is not dependent on the beams location or orientation in the 3D model.

Whenever the application changes the current work plane it is a good practice to restore the previous work plane set by user.

// first store current work plane
TransformationPlane currentPlane = myModel.GetWorkPlaneHandler().GetCurrentTransformationPlane();

// set new work plane same as parts local coordinate system 
TransformationPlane localPlane = new TransformationPlane(myPart.GetCoordinateSystem());
myModel.GetWorkPlaneHandler().SetCurrentTransformationPlane(localPlane);
 .
 .
 . 
// remember to restore current work plane 
myModel.GetWorkPlaneHandler().SetCurrentTransformationPlane(currentPlane);

Using coordinate systems

See the links below for more information on how to use coordinate systems:

• How to use coordinate systems in Tekla Structures?
• MatrixFactory class
• CoordinateSystem class