Working with structural connections

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After completing this lesson, you will be able to understand structural connections,

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load and place steel connections, modify steel connections, and copy steel connections.

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The objective domains covered are, 1.1e, work with structural framing and connections.

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Steel connections play an important role in the integrity of a structure.

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Typically, the type of structural connection is specified by the structural engineer.

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However, the fabricator may create the actual connection to suit their machinery and manufacturing processes.

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In Rivet, careful consideration should be given to the use of connections,

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as once a connection is placed along the element, other tools such as cut, cope, and align are disabled.

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Go ahead and open up the model 010-Work with structural connections.

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The model would open in the 3D view.

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Before we can use structural connections, we must first load the connections we would like to utilize in this project.

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To do this, on the Structure ribbon, select the Connection settings tool.

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In the Structural Connection Settings dialog box, you'll note that we have our available connections on the left hand side,

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and our loaded connections displayed on the right hand side.

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To help us navigate through the available connections, we have the Connection Group filters.

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So I'm going to start here by selecting Plates at beam.

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And in here, I shall add the base plate.

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I also want to add a clip connection and that's on the Platform beams.

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And here we have clip angle, let's also add that.

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Click "OK" to the Structural Connection Settings dialog.

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To place the connection, we'll first select the Structure ribbon and then select Connection.

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In the Properties palette, in the Type selector, select Base plate.

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We can select the column that we wish to attach the base plate to, and then either press "Enter" or "Space bar" to finish.

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The connection is then modeled.

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So we're now going to make some modifications to this structural connection.

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Go ahead and select the structural connection that you've just placed.

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And notice in the Properties palette, in the type selector, we currently have a type called Base plate.

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Let's click Edit Type and first duplicate our base plate type.

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So for the new name for our base plate, we'll type in BP2.

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And then we can modify the parameters for base plate 2.

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In the Edit Connection Type dialog box, you'll note that we have a live preview on the left hand side.

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Note here that we can orbit around this by holding the Shift and middle mouse button.

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On the right hand side of the dialog box, we can configure the connection.

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So let's start with the plate thickness. So I'm quite happy with 1 inch, so I'll leave that as is.

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You'll then note that the column shortening is governed by the plate thickness,

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I'm going to change this to the value, and I'm going to put a shortening of 2 inches in here.

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And what that will do is that will give me an inch here to allow for grounds for the base plate.

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I'll now select Base plate dimensions.

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And here you can see that we've got an initial projection of 3 inches, I'm going to change that to 4 inches.

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And you can see the base plate grows in size.

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If we select Anchor and holes, here we can choose our type of anchor that we want to use.

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So in this example here, I'm going to use a threaded anchor.

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And here we can choose our anchor size, so here we'll have three quarters of an inch.

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You'd also notice here that we can configure the anchor assembly which controls how many washers we have and so on.

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Ok, so let's now set the anchors parallel to the web.

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So here we have two anchors, of course, we can change this.

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I could say I wanted three anchors perhaps in there and you can now see we have three anchors.

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In this case though, we only want two and we'll configure the intermediate distance to 12 inches.

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We'll also set the anchors parallel to the flange and that would also be 12 inches.

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Finally, let's select the Holes option here and click on Grout holes.

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And here we want to enable a grout hole and we want a grout hole of 1 inch.

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So our base plate is now configured.

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Select "OK" to the Edit Connection Type, and "OK" again to the Type Properties, and our connection would update.

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Also note here, we have a 1 inch gap between the plates and the floor slab.

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Next, you copy the connection to similar columns.

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Select your connection, right mouse click and select Propagate Connection.

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The connections will begin to background process.

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And you'll now notice the connections are populated.

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Because all the connections are the same type, if I go back and edit the type, all of those base plates will update and change.

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The advantage of having the structural connections now in our BIM model is that we can now better communicate our design intent to the fabricator.