Cross Section Analysis with BuildIT Construction

Tutorial Download

If you would like to download the file used in this article, download the accompanying Training Data and extract its contents to a folder on your PC.

Prepare for Cross Section Analysis

• Open the training file “Cross Section Analysis.”
• In order to use cross section analysis, we must first have a surface with point associated to it. To create this association, we will use Auto-Associate.
  • Open the auto-associate command.
  • Select the point cloud “Tank Shell” for Clouds and select the “Design Tank” cylinder for Geometries.
    
  • Under “Surfaces and Meshes” ensure you use a value of 3 inches for “Exclude points father than.” This will delete points that are farther than 3 inches from our design cylinder. In actual workflows, this helps to clean up the data used for analysis.
    
  • Select Apply
    
• The other items we’ll need for the cross section analysis are planes representing our cross sections. In this case, we want them to be perpendicular to the design cylinder. This will allow us to see if the tank is deforming into or out of our design wall.
  • To create the planes, use Construct: Plane.
  • Select a point with the “Center” field highlighted.
    
  • We have the option of defining the normal. In this exercise, we know that the scanner’s inclinometer is our Z reference, so we will select Z for the normal.
    
  • Last, we need to set a size for the plane in length and width. In this case, we can enter 1200 inches for both length and width. This plane will also be the size of the cross section view created.
    
  • Select Apply
    
    
    
    Note: Multiple cross sections can be created and analyzed at once. If you want to create more cross sections, you can, but ensure that the cross sections do create a section of the cylinder.

Perform Cross Section Analysis

• Open the Cross-Section Analysis Command under Evaluate: Cross-Section Analysis.
• Select the “Design Cylinder” for Surfaces and select your cross section planes.
• For neighborhood size, enter 0.25 inch.
  • Neighborhood size represents the area above or below the cross-section plane to search.
• Enter 3 inches for Maximum search distance.
  • Maximum search distance refers to the distance to search from our design cylinder.
• For analysis display settings, uncheck “Compute limits” and enter 0.25 inches for higher tolerance and -0.25 inches for lower tolerance.
• Enter 50 for the needle scale.
  • The needle scale represents an exaggerated appearance of needles showing the direction of deviation away from our design cylinder.
• Select Apply
  

Create a Report from Cross Section Analysis

• When the analysis is run, views will be created representing an overall view and a view for each cross section plane. You can also put the cross section planes in No Show (CTRL + E when highlighted) to hide them from the screenshots.
  
  
• To create a report, first select the views and add them to the report.
  
• Next, we can run the report by selecting Report in the manager and the run report icon.