Merge Tools: Line of Beams

Description

Combines a series of connected beam elements into one.

Beam attributes that are applied to the extremities of the line of beams (e.g., Beam End Release) are transferred to the extremities of the merged beams.

Principal Axis Angle and Offset attributes are assigned to the merged beams, where possible.

The merged beams are assigned to the Entity Sets that contain the line of beams, where possible.

Other attributes applied to the line of beams will not be transferred to the merged beams.

Dialog

Angular Tolerance

Two beams at a common node will be merged when the angle between their principal 3-axes (the joint angle) is less than or equal to the Angular Tolerance.

Angle measurement

Static

All the initial joint angles are calculated prior to merging. Nodes with initial joint angles greater than the Angular Tolerance will remain after the merge operation; all other nodes will be removed by the merging of the connected beams.
Dynamic

The joint angles are calculated at every step of the merging progress. The merge starts at one end of the sequence and marches along to the other end. When two beams are merged, the joint angle at the next joint may change. The new joint angle is used to establish whether the next joint should be merged or not.