Creating an exploded view of a model.

As in my previous thread today I have made a 3d model of my balcony by simply extruding the steel profiles I used in my sections. I then used the union command to join them all together.

I now thaink and exploded isometric may be the better way to present the drawing but as I have now made the frame all one element what is the best way to seperate it?

the corners I think will be easy I just create a planar at 45 degrees and use that to split the corners but is there an easy way to seperate the mid PFC and angle?

I know I could just redraw it quickly but I was wondering if I could learn anything new?

balcony3d.dwg

A better idea another time might be to just GROUP those items (you can find it in your right click shortcut menu),

in that way they are easily manipulated en masse, but can be UNGROUPED at any time, thus they all maintain their

3D Model status, when taken independently.

Pretty tedious breaking those joined connections.

It would be really easy to remodel it right over the existing one, as long as you have the profiles handy, and your ENDPOINT OSNAPS turned on.

Thanks Dadgad

I thought it was probably going to be more of a hassle to split than redraw, but if you don't ask you don't know!

You're welcome.

Planar SLICES are, as you earlier surmised quite simple, but uncoping those unioned parts is a pain in the butt.

You could start using the SUBTRACT command, but I can't see where you will save any time overall.

When things start slowing down on you, if it doesn't make you uncomfortable, as it is easy to lose your perspective,

you can switch to 2D WIREFRAME visual style, and that will speed things up quite a bit.

I just realized that you only JOINED the decking substrate.

If you are talking about the green sections, I would just redraw them.

Is this an existing deck? or is a deck you will be building? It is a very poor design. Sorry. If you need some help, let me know.

Thanks Jimmy, it's not my design, I'm just doing me CAD monkey bit, so I'm not offended in the least. We've had our engineers design it to be cheap, modular and economical with the steel!

Yea, I know. But it is none of the above.

Sorry but I cringed when I saw it. Typical engineers who never had to build something themselves.

I would have used two of the 150mm outriggers. but three is fine. I would have made the deck composite with W-2 deck and concrete or W-3 deck and wood or what ever you are finishing the top with. The railing would be pipe which is drilled thru the 150mm outriggers and welded top and bottom. It would cost half the price with little high paid labor and it is 10 times as strong.

That deck is very labor intensive. Probably union iron worker engineers.

I agree it would be faster to redraw, but you could always sketch the profile of the beam, extrude it. and split the angle with the extruded surface. Then use the seperate command. Maybe not economical in this situation, but at least its a different approach

Well, I wound up redrawing it. I also added the handrail. The glass ballustrading and the deck I didn't show for clarity. I mainly wanted to show how it went together and where the timber battens went to fix the decking down.

If you think there is a lot of steel in this design you should have seen the last one! As it's an outside engineer may be he is designing in a higher FOS. We've already had to sue them once for a failure. Alternatively our local structural regulations may be more stringent than where you are, it only takes one balcony failure for whatever reason e.g. not installed as designed, for the politicians to over-react and order stronger regulation on the whole thing.

balcony3d.dwg