This section explains how Tekla Structures displays bolts and welds in drawings.
Bolts
Content To access the bolt properties dialog box, click Bolt... in the drawing properties dialog box. The options on the Content tab define the appearance of bolts in drawings.
Solid/Symbol There are several ways to display bolts in drawings. You can select the options from the Solid/symbol list box. See the examples below.
Solid Exact Solid
The options also include the DIN symbol option which corresponds to German standards (DIN).
Symbol content Use to indicate whether to include the Hole and Axis symbols in the drawing.
Visibility Use to control the visibility options for main parts and secondary parts. The options are:
• Visible
Displays holes in the drawing
• Not visible
Does not display holes in the drawing
Appearance For more information on the appearance of objects, see Common drawing object properties (p. 181)
User-defined bolt symbols
You can create your own bolt symbols and use them in drawings.
To create bolt symbols in the Symbol Editor:
1. Save the symbol file ud_bolts.sym in the symbol folder (usually the folder
\environments\country-independent\symbols\).
2. Open Notepad, or any text editor.
Symbol Symbol 2 Symbol 3
This is an additional feature that you can use if you need differ- ent bolt symbols to the ones Tekla Structures includes.
3. Create the a text file, consisting of lines, in three columns:
• The first column contains the bolt assembly standard
• The second contains the bolt diameter
• The third column contains the name of the symbol file and the symbol number, separated with the @-character
Sample lines from this text file:
7990 24 ud_bolts@1 7990 25 ud_bolts@2
Tekla Structures uses the user-defined symbol for bolts in the drawing that have the standard and diameter you define in this text file
4. Save the file with the name bolt_symbol_table.txt. 5. Set the environment variable in the batch file:
set XS_USER_DEFINED_BOLT_SYMBOL_TABLE=
bolt_symbol_table.txt
You can also write a full path to the definition file. Without the path Tekla Structures searches for the file in the model, firm, project, and system direc- tories.
6. To use your own bolt symbol, select it in the drawing properties dialog box, by clicking, Bolt... > Content > Solid/Symbol (User-defined symbol).
Welds
Content tab To access the weld properties dialog box, click Weld... in the drawing properties dialog box. The options on the Content tab define the how Tekla Structures dis- plays welds in drawings.
Weld number Tekla Structures assigns a number to each weld as it is created.
• No
The weld number is not displayed in the drawing.
• Yes
The weld number is displayed in the drawing.
Visibility The visibility options define which welds are visible in drawings.
Site/Workshop You can set the visibility options for welds using one of the following options:
• Not visible
Display none of the welds in the drawing.
• Site weld visible
Only display field welds in the drawing.
• Workshop weld visible
Only display shop welds in the drawing.
• Both visible
Both field welds and shop welds are displayed in the drawing.
Weld size limit Enter a weld size to filter that size welds out of the drawing. This is useful when you only want to show non-typical welds in a drawing.
To set whether the weld size is an exact or minimum value, use the environment variable XS_WELD_FILTER_TYPE.
Appearance For information on how to control the appearance of objects, see Common drawing object properties (p. 181).
See also Placing (p. 117)
Merging weld symbols
You can force Tekla Structures to use the same symbol for identical welds in a drawing, as shown below:
Use the environment variable XS_OMITTED_WELD_TYPE to specify the standard weld type to filter out from drawings.
For example, you can define the standard weld to be 8 mm sin- gle-V butt weld:
set XS_OMITTED_WELD_TYPE=3
For information on weld types, see Weld types in the Modeling Manual.
Steps 1. Open a drawing.
2. Hold down the Ctrl key and select the weld symbols.
3. Right-click and select Merge from the pop-up menu. Tekla Structures com- bines the symbols.
4. To change the leader line position, drag its handles.
Splitting symbols To split merged weld symbols, right-click the symbol and select Split from the pop-up menu.