Watchits! |
  
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Watchits! |
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The following is a list of watch-its related to the GSA import/export.
•Elements with materials other than the default GSA materials of ‘Steel’, ‘Concrete Long’ and ‘Concrete Short’ may be skipped during the import process, or at least not correctly imported.
•If a model is imported from GSA, then some elements are deleted, those elements will not be deleted if the model is exported back to GSA.
•The GSA ‘Design layer’ and ‘Analysis layer’ are independent models in the same file, it is possible to have difference between the two.
•The export back to GSA will always go to the ‘design layer’ even if you originally imported from the ‘analysis layer’. This is by design, because the GSA design layer is a better fit for the BIM data generated in Bentley Structural.
•The export to GSA will create ‘areas’ for 2d elements, but it will not automatically create a ‘region’ to encompass those areas. This is by design, so engineers can manually select the ‘areas’ that make up a ‘region’
•Section orientation set by node will be correctly worked out when imported from GSA, but will not be maintained when exported back (it will become rotation by angle)
•If GSA ‘beam’ element has equal offsets at each end, they will be retained as offsets in BSTR. Other offsets such as individual offset at each node, and offsets on ‘slab’ vertexes will be converted to global coordinates
•Import process can be slow, importing 11,000 elements takes about 30 minutes. But it still beats the heck out of manually modelling 1000’s of elements. Large models may need to be broken into smaller parts, and then referenced back together. The GSA file can also be made smaller by removing unnecessary load case data etc. For this reason it's advised to use a copy of the working GSA file.
•Engineers should use sensible property names, or maintain a list of what those property name refer to.
•Someone or one model should be the canonical source of geometry, everything flows from there.
•After you have used the GSA import or export tools, when you close BSTR a password prompt will appear, just cancel. (Will be fixed in future)
•Engineers model near 0,0. BIM models are often built in real-world coordinates. This will probably affect export to GSA and other analysis packages. One suggested solution is to leave the imported models near 0,0, and then move the reference file attachment so it appears in real world co-ordinate in the master model.
•‘Merge tolerance’ (Import > Roundtripping options) used to provide tolerance for rounding errors in co-ordinates (when imported from GSA) for determining if an item has moved. Units are master units of the BSTR design file.
•GSA can search for appropriate section sizes in it’s catalogue, if given a similar name. This functionality has been problematic for Australian sections, in GSA version earlier than 8.2
•‘Feature Cuts’ on beam elements in BSTR will be ignored when exported to GSA. ‘Feature cuts’ on BSTR slab elements will be exported to GSA as a ‘void area’
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