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Use this documentation when building your Tekla Structures apps

Exercise 3: Connect columns to pad footings

Updated: 13 May 2019

You will learn how to connect columns to the pad footings.

After downloading the TSOpenAPISelfLearningExercises package from GitHub (button above), find the example code for this exercise at \Exercise3- Connections\ folder.

Before you start, open the project that you created in exercise 2.

Connect columns to pad footings

Modify the last exercise so that you add a method adding stiffened base plates between the pad footings and columns you created in the earlier exercise. Feed the inserted pad footings and columns to this method to create the connections. Follow these steps to create your application:

  1. Create a method to connect the columns to the pad footings using the Connection class, create and insert a Baseplate with the following properties (remember to localize needed values):
    Name = "Stiffened Base Plate";
    Number = 1014;
    PositionType = PositionTypeEnum.COLLISION_PLANE;
    SetAttribute("cut", 1);
    LoadAttributesFromFile("standard");
    UpVector = new Vector(0, 0, 1000);
    //Use the columns as the primary part.
  2. Create a method that creates pad footing, column and connection to a given position.
  3. Modify your click-event so that you call the method created in step 2.
  4. Test your application.

Note:  the "cut" attribute is a option menu in Tekla Structures and it's defined in an .inp file for that particular connection. Values returned by option menus are such that:

  • First value (usually 0) means empty value internally.

  • Second value (usually 1) means value 0.

  • Third value (usually 2) means value 1.

 

The result should look similar to this:

Tekla Structures Open API model connect column to pad footing