Advance Steel – Make the most of your Base Plates on Foundation Plans

One of the first drawings that is often needed from any structure you model in Advance Steel is likely a foundation layout showing the positions of base plates relative to the grid. The suggested drawing style to use for this (UK Build) is “Stanchion Layout – All” as shown in the image above. This drawing style has some hidden abilities that you may not be aware of. Are you making the most of it?

If you look at the Properties page in the Advance Joint Properties dialog of any joint in Advance Steel, there is a property called Name. Not a lot of people use this, largely because the names do not seem to show anywhere else in the system, such as on drawings. However, they HAVE been utilised for base plates.

It is common practice to make as many identical base plates in your structure as possible. That results in as few variations as possible in the whole structure. Thus, one enlarged base plate view may apply to many positions in the structure. How do you know which ones? Complete the Name field in your base plate joints, e.g. “Base Type A”, and these names will be used to label each visible base plate in the Stanchion Layout. No name will mean no label. Take another look at the image above and you will see each base plate has been labelled “Base Type A” or “Base Type B”.

This is an ideal time to use Joint Groups. As soon as you name the master joint all matching joints in the group get the same name. If you need a variation, then take the joint out of the group and change the name and continue.

As a side point you will also observe in the image that there is a concrete slab between A1 and B3 and this is automatically labelled with a balloon stating the Top of Concrete level. This level respects the datum level used by all levels and level symbols in the project.

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