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Placing or aligning angled tubes to vertical tubes


willb

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I'm using a set of pre defined block definitions consisting of steel tubes with a 48.3mm Ød / 4mm wall thickness, each length is in 300mm increments and lengths start at 300mm to 6300mm. All other parts are individual components used in assembly and will be quantified by piece and weight.

 

I'm trying to figure out some variational methods in order to install fittings and tubes at an angle at the same height on two vertical tubes. Describing this in terms with an AutoCAD mindset, the vertical tubes protrude in the Z axis, while the angled tubes would connect to these on the X/Y plane. Given the vertical tubes are different lengths and that one of them is on a lattice beam which doesn't have an easily locatable centre point, and that quadrant snaps can't be used for angles (unless i'm mistaken) I'm finding this a little challenging due to my inexperience with AutoCAD and drawing. So i'm reaching out for ideas and different approaches with technics i've yet to expose myself to from some of the veteran AutoCAD users.

 

I've attached images with annotations, and also a dwg.

 

I have actually been able to install the fittings an the tubes while experimenting, but, it's taken quite a few hours and the methods i've used aren't particularly accurate nor efficient. I've set the angles by eye governed be lines drawn from centre points of the vertical tubes and placed the rotate gizmo on these and rotated referencing the line drawn for the fittings with two view ports at different angles. Crude, but not accurate. For the tube install, i've used the 2D Align tool, picking a quadrant point at each end but one on the front of the tube and one on the back and picked points in the centre of the fittings. However, as can be seen in the dwg, the tubes refuse to sit perfectly with in the cups of the fittings. The align tool seems to contort the tube (i'm selecting-don't scale to fit in the align tool). I've tried the 3D align, same problem. I thought about connecting the fittings to the tube first then aligning this assemble to the verticals. For this i need to know the distance between the verticals and offset the centre insert points of the fittings to that measurement, then i'd need snap points on the verticals to align, not an easy task for a beginner. Another idea would be to perhaps modify the fitting block reference to give it a centre point inside the cup.

 

Any suggestions appreciated.

Edited by willb
Important usage info added
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Wow, fantastic tutorial. I should have mentioned (have edited post) the parts i'm using are pre defined blocks use for assembly, i'm selecting them from my blocks palette and placing them in the structure.

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Something to play with, Sorry I can't do solids (LT) but using a dynamic block could possibly make things easier, it does need a lot more work to get it really usable, but building a library of just a few parts shouldn't take more than a day or so (this was about 30 minutes)

Coupling.dwg

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As far as the vertical tubes on the block "Layher Beam 6m" you could create centerlines on the vertical tubes that might prove helpful in placing the couplings and cross braces. Once you have created one centerline it would just be a matter of copying them where needed. The centerlines should be placed on their own layer.

 

You can also create a centerline for your block "tube 2100mm".

 

I have a question. Why is Viewres set to a value of "2"? The AutoCAD default is 100 but circles will look less like polygons if this number is bumped up to somewhere between 2000-5000. I'm assuming since you are doing 3D work your computer can easily handle a higher setting.

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Hi Remark, The centre lines you speak of, do you mean drawing them on the outside face of the vertical tubes on the layher beam or inside the tube? If inside, that's proving to be bit of a complication. This can be done on the yellow vertical tubes since they're open ended. It'd be great to be able to pick a quadrant point on both sides of the vertical tube at any position and then draw a line across and then use the mid pint of that line but I can't figure that one out either. I'm using the quad point at the base of the vertical member on that ;ayher beam to attache the red 90 degree coupler. Rotating that is tricky because A) there's no centre point for it and B) the angle to the next vertical with another attached coupler is unknown. The other tricky part is getting that 2100mm tube inside those couplers and as you suggest a centre line could be useful, but perhaps not in the tube itself but within each of the couplers. That way i'd just use a normal centre point in the tube ends and align them to the centre point in each of the couplers. Those coupler angle need to be sorted first though haha.

 

As the the ViewRes setting. LOL, I'm unable to notice a visual difference set at either end of the scale, 2 or 20k. I'm using REGENALL after changing the setting, is that correct procedure? I'm also spending 98% of the time with the X-Ray visual style, occasionally flipping into Realistic to check for any visual fusing or interference. Secondly, and this may serve others' curiosity, (and it's long winded but possibly interesting) I was using 2014 and graphics performance was atrocious once a few components were added. In addition, I was trying to do a 2D mirror with a hundred or so blocks selected, AutoCAD hung, stalled, staggered, blanked out, stop responding and after a 5 minutes of hitting ESC repeatedly would come back to life or I got impatient and killed the app with that Windows Task Manager thingo.

The hardware used for this was a ASUS GyrphonZ87, i7-4770k / 8GB RAM, built In Intel HD4600 graphics. I accepted this poor performance knowing the video card isn't high performance. I since sent that ASUS board back because none of the USB ports will actually charge my iPad or my phone, which I don't accept as the correct behaviour. In the meantime I fired up my Mac Pro with an Intel W3690 and 32GB of ECC ram but with a really low end Geforce 9500 GT video card, which probably is lower spec than the HD4600, AutoCAD again performed poorly and the 2D mirror was also problematic. So I decided, blow this, I'll buy a new GryphonZ97 board and a Geforce GTX 780, chuck my SSD back in fire up AC2014 and again, performance sucked, just as bad as the Intel HD4600 and the GT 9500. Something was a miss. GPU-Z reported 5% GPU usage while the CPU was using 20%+. That raised several questions. In the end I discovered that AutoCAD 2014 was using the built in software driver acaddm11.hdi' as mentioned in the Tuner log along with 'contains a 3D Device that is not certified.". Every attempt to get it to use an Nvidia driver failed. I lost a few days and many hours during this period.

 

I Installed a trial of AutoCAD 2015, performance tuner log reports it's using a DirectX 11 device and meets the requirement. I was concerned at first because there was no difference in performance, but I'm assuming it may be to do with a drawing I had that crashed AutoCAD with a fatal error and was possibly damaged and being the cause of low performance. Since creating a new drawing performance improved. The 2D mirror command worked and the performance seemed better reflected by GPUZ which reports that GPU load can use up to 85%.

 

To be learned is, 2014 and below probably use only a Quadro or Firepro workstation card, anything else it used a software driver. 2015 will use any DirectX 9-11 card. Why this is an extremely grey and unspoken topic is beyond me, perhaps the silence of the masses helps Nvidia and ATI retain fat margins selling lower spec/performing higher margin workstation cards. Still i'm not 100% chuffed with the performance of AutoCAD with the GTX 780. Next question is, is it known authoritatively, that the 'double precision' performance of the GTX Titan is used and benefits AutoCAD in any significant way, such as having large assemblies of 3D objects selected, rotated, panned, zoomed? This GTX 780 will do for now as i'm learning on small structures but I wonder how it's gona handle a 50m tall structure I'll build out of the components in the dwg I posted earlier.

 

hrmm, not such a quick reply after all eh

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Hey steve, i'll look more closely at your coupling tomorrow. I love how you've created a dynamically resizable tube, that's clever and efficient, may use this for my tube lengths. The rotating element i'd need to spend more time thinking about. The challenge for me is that every structure will be connected with my red couplers which are actually called 90 degree couplers which can obviously rotate around any member in either location (on a vertical or on a horizontal tube) which connect two tubes at 90 degrees. There's other couplers called swivelling but these are not load bearing and are used only on the sides of vertical tube members to aid in straightening them (in real life) and for rigidity.

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When I have more time I'll read your entire novel.

 

Re: centerlines. Yes, I mean the vertical tubes on the block Layher Beam 6m just like I said previously. I had no trouble drawing them so I don't see why you should. You can create some temporary geometry on your couplings and your tubes to rotate things into position. Perhaps the ALIGN command can also be put to use depending on what you are attempting to do.

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The coupler I drew rather sketchily is a swivel coupling, I added the tube to show how that might work for all sizes of tubing. Buried inside that coupling is just a line that runs from the center of the tubes, which I thought would be easier for placing you need to manually place the fixed part of the coupling and the whole thing can be rotated using the end of that line as the base point. If you click on the block, you might also spot a small blue circle just outside the coupling, grab that and you can rotate the tube/coupling to any angle you want (including 90). I only just thought that it would make life much easier if that stretch and rotate were actually centered on the fixed part. I'll have another play when I get a moment, but that might not be until next week.

As a note you could also throw in some attributes and extract a parts list from a finished drawing.

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...

Any suggestions appreciated.

 

If you do this type of work for a living and any significant frequency - Autodesk Inventor Frame Generator and assembly constraints.

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