SpaceClaim Online Help

Splitting Beams

The SplitUsing the Combine tool to split solids or surfaces. You select a solid or surface to use as a Cutting tool to cut the target. See Cutter object. tool finds endpoint connections between Solidified beams, where one Beam endpoint lies somewhere in the middle of another Beam.

To split solidified beams

1. If beams are currently displayed as Wire Beams, change them to SolidObject that encloses volume. A surface becomes a solid if it encloses volume. Beams

2. Click Split in the Beams group on the Prepare tab

3. Any connections that can be Split are highlighted

4. Use the tool guides to Split connections:
   • Complete splits all of the highlighted connections
   • Select Problem splits only those connections that you select
     • After making your selections, simply exit the tool, do not click Complete
   • Exclude Problem removes connections that you select
     • After making your selections, click Complete to split the remaining connections

In any connections found, the Beam with the smaller cross section is split by the Beam with the larger cross section.

If the beams have the same cross section, they are not highlighted.

After splitting, the split portion of the beam that lies within the larger beam is marked as "Rigid". You can check this by selecting the split beam within the larger beam and looking at the Rigid property in the Properties panelArea of the user interface that displays editable details about the selected object(s). This panel is initially displayed on the lower left side of the screen, but can be moved..

Some beams may have cross sections that are not the same but are of similar size. You can chose to ignore these by setting the Ignore similar option. This sets a percentage difference in sizes that is acceptable for considering two beams to be the same. The default value is 10%.

Example

The images below show a zoomed in portion of the truss above. The image on the left shows two of the connections found. The image on the right shows the result of clicking Complete.