I am trying to create a pipe rack using rectangular volume components. With the kind of complication that DC poses with the positioning the local axes of the child components. It may be easier to do the modelling manually. Is there a simpler way of doing this from the native functionality available on SU.
what is the target “pipe rack”? multiple tobacco pipes? copper plumbing pipes?
Please see the nested component. I am trying to replace the line members with volume elements representing the structural sections. This is what is appearing in the previous SU file.
The highlighted represents a portal frame that has to be repeated by the copies depending on the length of the rack that is need.
Rack1b.skp (26.0 KB)
I’m not sure I totally understand, but this could be a good use case for Profile Builder. If the frames are the same, but the spacing varies, but equally spaced, and has minimum and maximum spacing requirements, PB could do that.
Here is a start for your DC. Enjoy
Nino
Rack1 (SU 2020).skp (160.0 KB)
To have it plumbed to the axes, are you saying that it should align with the global axes? It seems better to set the local axes at the center of the rectangular areas so that position changes by parameter input changes remain minimal.
I made up a profile section for the beam using rectangular areas for the top and bottom flanges and the mid section web. I am thinking that I may be able to reuse the profile I made. But I realize that I need to define the positions of the areas so as to be able to change them using the parameter inputs.
