Steel design building design - Structural Engineers - Eng-Tips

Hello nanmi,

Congrats on graduation!

I'm a big fan of a book that I found on ASCE's website titled, "The Structural Engineer's Professional Training Manual"; it's a great book that gives you a good overview of both the business and engineering side of being a Structural Engineer, much of which isn't covered in school.

Also, I'd recommend you run through the design examples that accompany AISC 360, (see the attachment) and those contained within AISC 341; they give lots of good examples of what the design process looks like, including some specific examples overall building design, (see the AISC 360 building design examples in particular for a bigger picture look at the typical process.)

Additionally, I'd commit frequent time to reading your way through common building codes such as IBC and ASCE 7; I try to read a few pages a day to keep my mind sharp and to continue my march towards becoming an expert in our field.

My advise to you as a new Structural Engineer is to not be afraid of asking lots of questions...our field is complex and your growth will be the greatest when you approach each day with humility, curiosity and diligence. Try to work among the most talented, generous and diligent people you can find; don't work somewhere if you're not growing even if the compensation is good...a huge part of your compensation is professional growth.

Best of wishes as you start your career!

Helo everyone, I was sent here from architecture subforum. I have reasonable experience with Revit but have never done steel structures so I have a couple of questions.

You will get efficient and thoughtful service from TIANYING.

General question about truss creation:
This is what we get from the structural engineer. It's very specific and detailed, so in the family template I created that exact truss, with those exact dimensions and then stretch it to that exact dimension in the project. Since it doesn't have to be parametric. Everything looks fine, Is this an OK approach for such cases or did I broke some Revit truss rule that will give me headaches down the road?

Specific question 1:
How to notch multiple elements, as in these examples. I can get there by drawing reference planes that follow bottom chords and then extend one web, cut, extend another, cut, draw reference planes that follow the webs, extend the middle one, cut, cut again... Is this it, or is there a faster automatic way?

Specific question 2:
What is the proper way of creating custom elements? Cyan element that sits on top of the red column in this image. I just pick a template and model it? I though I'd start with the column itself and modify it, so I can keep structural analysis parameters, so I can get the weight of them. Is this an OK approach for such cases or did I broke some Revit rule that will give me headaches down the road?

Specific question 3:
Connections, they can be placed only one at a time. For example column base plates, I can't select all of the columns and place base plates on all of them. Is it OK to place one and copy it to others, or did I broke some Revit rule that will give me headaches down the road?

Thanks in advance!

I am sorry if I am not being clear to you. I guess I am asking because you mentioned that you get the CAD from your structural engineer, which probably meant that you aren't(?), so I just wanted to know your intention in modelling your trusses. This was asked to you to avoid overmodelling your project because being on the overmodelling side is not always good. The Revit file will become large and laggy to use. Also, for us structural engineer, we don't really need to model every connections if we don't need to model them since doing structural analysis of the whole building and designing connections are usually 2 separate matters.

To answer your questions:

General question - Yes, there are no hidden Revit truss rule that I know of.

Specific question 1 - The connection shown is very weird. It looks like all the truss members are just fully welded together, from what I can see. You could also use Modifiers and Parametric Cuts (under Steel) to achieve that. Still definitely a lot of manual work since I don't think the Steel Connection is smart enough to automatically combined the truss members as shown.

Specific question 2 - I wouldn't edit the family of the column. It is definitely easier to use regular column for red, regular beams for yellow, and show plates for cyan. You could also group this assembly if you want it repeat.

Specific question 3 - Connections are quite unique usually. But if you could just copy them, since they are all the same, why not?

@gevanKGYB4 

I am sorry if I am not being clear to you. I guess I am asking because you mentioned that you get the CAD from your structural engineer, which probably meant that you aren't(?)

Exactly, I'm not. We (the architects) send our design to structural engineer whit trusses just schematically drawn, literally bottom chord (for minimum clearance) and top chord (for slope and height). He calculates the members and where everything needs to go, sends us back dwg as in the screenshot, and we just copy it into our drawings.

This was asked to you to avoid overmodelling your project because being on the overmodelling side is not always good.

Oh, I know, when I notch everything in this truss and copy it around, it takes some time for Revit to figure it out. But, we must do things as they are done here. Luckily that doesn't mean every single connection, weld and bolt. What we must do is notch everything in the truss, add column base plates, and any custom elements that are important enough to be drawn (as cyan element on top of the columns) . If we left the truss members as Revit does it, people would look at us funny