Neighbouring parts in drawings

Tekla Structures
Not version-specific
Tekla Structures
Neighboring parts
neighbor parts
drawings
Environment
Not environment-specific

What are neighbor parts? 


‘Neighbor parts’ in Tekla Structures refers to those (optionally shown) parts that are close or connected to the parts from which a drawing has been created.
Depending on the settings, ‘neighbor parts’ can be parts that are:
  • Connected to or connecting a part or an assembly, or
  • Nearby a part or an assembly
If an assembly drawing has been made of a part belonging to an assembly with several parts, all parts will be shown. Those parts are not considered ‘neighbor’ parts, since they belong to the assembly.
See the example below. A beam is connected with a site weld to one beam and with a workshop weld to the other beam. Since the workshop welded beam belongs to the assembly, it will be shown in the assembly drawing regardless of the ‘neighbor parts’ settings. The site weld connected beam is considered a ‘neighbor’ part.

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For single parts drawings, since they are always made of an individual part, all neighboring or connected/connecting parts (even if they belong to the same assembly as the part) are considered ‘neighbor’ parts.

Neighbor Part properties


More information on using the Neighbor Part Properties dialog box (click the ‘Neighbor part…’ button available in drawing properties) can be found in this article: Showing neighbor parts in drawings.
The examples below show what some of the most common settings mean inside this properties dialog.

Visibility – Neighbor Parts

‘Connecting’ and ‘Connected’ parts

It can sometimes be confusing to know what the difference between these two definitions is. A good rule of thumb to remember what is a ‘connecting part’ and what is a ‘connected part’: When connecting two parts using welds or bolts, the first part selected will be the other parts’ ‘connecting part’. The second and subsequent parts selected will be the ‘connected’ parts to the part first selected’.

See the picture below to visualize this concept. The part in question is the middle green beam B-21. The other two beams are welded to it. If a drawing is created of B-21, the ‘Connected’ and ‘Connecting’ will be displayed depending on the labels shown below:

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If neighbor parts are not showing in drawings when they should, a common cause is that the drawing view is not large enough. You can control this by increasing the size of the view size, or by increasing the value of the ‘View extension for neighbor parts’ option in the drawing’s section view properties dialog box.

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You can use templates to determine which parts are ‘connecting’/’connected’ if you do not remember which parts were selected first/last in the model.

There are two good ways to do this in Template Editor.
  1. In a bolt type row, you can use the attribute “CONNECTED_PARTS” which will list results in a “x → y” format. The → arrow means ‘is connected to’, so ‘x’ will be the ‘connected’ part and ‘y’ the ‘connecting part.
  2. In a bolt or weld type row, you can use the attributes ‘MAIN_PART.XXXXX’ to show attributes of the ‘connecting’ part. Use ‘SECONDARY_1.XXXXX’, ‘SECONDARY_2.PART_POS’, etc to show the attributes of the ‘connected’ parts. A good example of using this can be found in the template called “650   Point To Point Bolt list” in the US Imp environment (usimp\us_roles\steel\system) or the templates called  “TS_Report_Inquire_Bolt” and “TS_Report_Inquire_Welding” in the Default environment (common\system).

‘None’ and ‘All Components'

The ‘None’ setting will not show any neighbor parts, and the ‘All components’ setting will show both ‘connecting’ and ‘connected’ parts.


‘By Extreme’

This option is used to show the parts around the part from which the drawing has been made, regardless of their connection type or even if they are not connected to the part at all! As long as the other parts in the model fit inside the drawing view, they will be considered ’neighbor’ parts and they are shown in the drawing.
It works the same way in single and assembly drawings.

Visibility - Main/Secondary parts

The main and secondary options refer to the neighbor parts that you want to filter out. In the example below, the green beam is connected to two lateral beams via a plate. The beam is site-welded to the plate, and thus they do not form an assembly. The plates are workshop-welded to the lateral beams, thus they make an assembly.

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When you create assemblies with workshop bolts and welds, the first part you select becomes the ‘main’ part and the subsequent part become the secondaries. In this example, we created both assemblies differently, each time selecting either the plate or the lateral beam as secondary.

You can easily identify in a model which one is a main or a secondary part by command Inquire > Assembly Objects. The parts that are highlighted orange are the ‘main’ parts, while the yellow ones are the secondaries.

In the drawings, using the Both / Main parts /Secondary parts give the following results:

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There are some limitations when trying to show neighbor parts made from complicated assemblies (that is, with sub-assemblies, or several parts). We recommend that you use the ‘by extreme’ visibility functionality if the normal ‘main part’/’secondary parts’ settings do not work as expected. Then filter out any of the parts that you do not wish to show using the ‘Neighbor part filter’ settings in the drawing properties dialog box.
 
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