This article provides an in-depth guide on visualizing and constructing a complex structural truss using a series of specific dimensions and guidelines. It navigates the reader through the process of creating intricate components including bolt openings and plates, and emphasizes the importance of precision and attention to detail.
Key Insights
- The article emphasizes a methodical approach while constructing a complex truss, detailing how to construct each part from specific points, dimensions, and guidelines. This includes creating bolt openings, adding guidelines, and visualizing plates.
- The author underscores the importance of precision when creating these complex structures. This includes careful selection and deletion of points, accurate snapping to intersection points, and avoiding confusing perspectives.
- The guide also highlights the potential for error and provides solutions, such as the use of guides and reference lines, checking and rechecking dimensions, and creating backup copies of work. It demonstrates how to correct mistakes like accidentally selecting an edge instead of a face, and how to mirror and group components effectively.
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Now as you work into B, let's again use the same sort of method. We'll draw from this point to this point, 4, enter.
From this point to this point, 1 foot 10 1/4 inches, enter. Up this way, 4 inches. We do not know this dimension, so we can stop here.
And let's add a guideline from this point. We know that this is going to be 4 inches and then another guideline for 1 inch above that. At this point, let's go over to our truss and we can see that this B should be right around these plates.
If we are unsure of where we think B should go, we can open up that PDF or that JPEG view of Structural Truss Drawings 1 and we can see that B is right here and B is also on this side. Now what I want to do is I want to draw, just as a reference, these general lines. That way I can use them to play.
So you see, I'm just drawing just these edges and I want to make sure that I actually snap to the right points. You can see that I did not draw directly on the face. So I want to delete these two and just redraw those.
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Then select each of these. You can see that I have all the angles drawn correctly and then go to my Move tool. I want to move these over just up here.
I'll make these into a group. Right click, make group. That way they don't accidentally snap to anything else.
So let's position these along this guide that I created and roughly to where this aligns, right at that point. This direction doesn't matter much as long as we get the primary members correct. Now that we have those guides, we can do some additional guidelines off of these lines.
So one inch off of there, one inch here, one inch here, one inch here, and we already have that one down there as one inch. Okay, so now that we have these additional guides, we can continue to keep drawing. We can go from here to here and we see that this is 1 foot 1 inch.
So go all the way up to here and do 1 foot 1, enter, and then across 4, enter, and then down to this intersection point and this way to 11.5, enter. Now from here, hover over this edge. We snapped the perpendicular to edge, type 4, enter, and then from this point to this intersection, enter, and here.
Now that we have this group, now we continue to delete these reference lines that we drew. Delete that and now let's add additional guides for our bolt openings. We'll go to our guides and we can go from here to 2 inches, 4 inches, 2 inches, making sure that we don't accidentally snap to the blue because if you notice the blue is actually going down and not going up.
So sometimes our perspective will confuse us. So that's 4. Always make sure that you're going in the direction that you are intending.
All right, so now that we have all of these points for these bolt locations, we can create center lines for each of these. So create a reference line, 2 inches, a reference line, 2 inches, and a reference line, 2 inches, and then finally we can create some circles. We know that these are 1/2 inch.
We do 0.5, enter, and now it'll automatically snap to 1/2 for each of these. Now we can select each of these by holding down the CTRL key to select multiple. If you accidentally hit a dimension, that's okay.
We'll delete each of these face areas. Just don't accidentally select an edge. If you accidentally are hitting an edge, hold down Shift to do the plus-minus to deselect that edge.
Then once you have all these faces of these circles selected, press Delete to remove these. Then we'll double click, right click, make group, and again let's go to our bolt head component; we realize that we did delete that guide. We do need that guide back.
We'll just quickly add a guide again from here. Type 2 and go back to our bolt head. Go to the intersection, click the intersection again, and keep doing this.
All right, now we can do a selection window, make group, edit, and delete guides. Now I see that this plate is very similar to this plate, so I want to see if I can actually just copy this one over to this point right here. So where I can see it's already starting to align, it's like right there, and then I can make some modifications.
I do see that this half is accurate, but this half is not. So what I'll do is I'll actually double click into this group. I want to select all the bolts.
I don't need these bolts anymore. Actually I'll leave these four, but I'll delete these. So I'll go to my plus-minus selection to deselect the bolts, and I'll make a group of just this, then press CTRL + A, deselect this group, and then delete.
Now double click into this group, double click into this group, and now let's draw a line from the center point, midpoint, down. We want to mirror this. We can see that this dimension here is 1 foot, and we need this to be 2 feet, so we can actually mirror this side completely.
So I'll do a selection window and select all these components. Be careful not to select more, and not to select this line right here. Hit delete, and then erase this line, this line, and this line.
And now I will escape out, and you can see that I have—if I escape two times—I leave both of these groups, and I have this component here. Then I will do a move, and click or hit Control to make a copy. Along here, right click, flip along, components, red.
And then one more time, move this way, and now we want to join these groups together. We'll hold down Control to select both, make group, double click into this, we want to explode all of this. So select, I did a CTRL + A, right click, explode.
Now we have this component, and this component. So I'm going to explode both of these two, right click, explode, and then I'm going to erase this line, and this line, and then double click, right click, make group. I do see that there's one extra line I want to erase, so I'll go back, and I'll erase this line.
There are a few other bolts that are missing right here, so I can go back to my guidelines again one last time, and just go—just to double check—we can go 2,2, and 4. And now going back to our bolt head, exit out of that group, bolt head, and bolt head. And now if I was to leave this group, we have a group here, we have each—we have three groups now.
Now I'm going to edit, delete guides, and now we're kind of down to the final plates that we need to create. I will go save my file, and I want to call this one skp215_downloads. I want to save this one as clubhouse-truss-plates.skp, and then click Save.
In the next video, we will create three more plates, and then we will place them onto our truss. I will see you in the next video.
