The ‘Configure Steelwork’ window is designed to save you time when editing the steelwork of a structure that has equipment, backties, or ornaments attached. It does this by showing you all of the attached items in a single window and allows you to make the required changes without having to remove your attached items.
This article covers how the configurator determines what items are made available to you in the respective dropdown lists. To see a guide on how to use the configurator, please see this article.
Equipment Filtering
The goal of the configurator is to ensure that any attached wire supports, drop tubes, and backties remain the same regardless of the mast(s) and/or gantry that are chosen by the user. This goal gives us an initial list of steelwork that’s applicable for the currently attached items.
Please note: Ornaments are not taken into account when generating the initial list of steelwork.
If required, to increase the initial list of steelwork, the configurator allows you to remove any attached equipment. If you remove a bracket or SPS, it will also remove the associated wire supports, but will not detach the associated wires from the structure.
The below demonstrates the list of available masts before and after removing a bracket.
Compatible Steelwork
Once the initial list of masts and gantries has been determined, Lineardraft checks that each mast in the list is compatible with at least one of the gantries in the list, and vice-versa. This provides us with a list of compatible steelwork.
Steelwork Selection
The compatible steelwork is then cross-referenced with the currently selected structure type to provide a list of applicable masts and gantries that the user can choose from.
Structure Type Selection
From the list of compatible steelwork, Lineardraft generates a list of valid structure types which the user can choose from.
Please note: Lineardraft doesn’t allow you to switch between single-mast (e.g. STCs, TTCs) and two-mast (e.g. portals) structure types.