Tower Member

Use Tower Member tool to create tower members on tower slopes. This tool find out an imaginary plane which leave no or less gap between the matching leg surfaces on slope and create member.

How to locate

The installers are available at Transmission Tower Collection. After installing, Tower Member come under Transmission Tower Collection in the Applications & components. Or else search for Tower Member in Application &components. Icon for Tower Member as shown below.
 

Usage

Input for this extension:

Two Points & Two Members : Clicking on the icon ask to pick first point, then second. Then it ask for first member then second. The point can be picked members edges or gage line point lying on the picked member leg surface.
The tool project the first point and second point to the picked member and finds an appropriate plane to rest the inserting member sothat the leg surface of the inserting member does not clash with the picked member leg surface.

Tower Member Dialog 

It has two tab pages.

1. Parameters
2. Properties

Parameters

 

Side :

To control member creation on near side or far side of picked members.

 

Leg Orientation:

To control orientation of leg towards up or down.
 

Swap Legs:

To swap legs between long and short.
 

Rotation offset:

To change rotation angle of member if required.

Member Offsets:

 
Member Start/End  Extension offset : To control offsets along member X axis and it may require for maintaining edge distances assuming the start and end points are bolt locations.
Member Heel offset: This provide offset vertically from heels at start and end. This facility also help for bolting at picked points.
Member Gap : Generally this is not required as tool taking care off not having clash with picked member. But if  members are in an awkward position, and the imaginary plane find out by the tool is not avoiding the clash, user may add a gap start/ end or both to avoid clash.

Work Plane Creation:

The imaginary work plane made visible to user by making the below option to yes. But make sure that in 'display properties', construction planes are made visible in components.
 
 

Accessories:

Here 'Gage Line' component made available as part of this 'Tower Member' as a nested plugin. It get activated when the option made to 'yes' from 'no'. Gage distances can be added. Copy buttons are available as in Gage Line. Gage Line Attribute can be called here for other properties.
 

Properties

Basic properties of Tower Member can be altered here
  

 

Field	Default Values
Name	Tower Member
Profile	L50*5
Material	Steel_Undefined
Class	1

Sample Output

Example 1:

1. Tower Layout created with the help of 'Tower Line' (1 in the picture). Then four Tower legs (2 in the picture) are created using 'Beam' with the hel of snap points from the 'tower line'.
 

2. Tower member inputs:

1. Pick point 1(1 in picture)
2. Pick point 2 (2 in picture)
3. Pick first member (3 in picture)
4. Second member (4 in picture)

 
3. Output

 

 
Example 2:

Tower Member Inserted from a local gage (inserted using 'Gage Line by Point') line intersection with tower line.
 

1. Gage Line by Point
2. Pick Point 1 for tower member (intersection with Tower Line)

Direct Manipulation Features

The Tower Member tool is equipped with direct manipulation features. This get enabled by activating the following 'Direct Modification (D)' switch.
 

Contextual Toolbar:

Contextual toolbar is a mini toolbar which gets opened once click on component in 'Select Components' and click on cubic button as shown below. Please make sure that the Direct Modification (D) switch is active. This enable user to change frequently used attributes very ease with out opening extension dialog.
 

Distance Manipulator

After selecting Tower Member component in 'Select Components' distance manipulators gets activated. The distances displayed can be edited directly.