Housepoints vs straight drop

[Jörgen Dohmen]

Hi Everybody,

 

Does anyone know how to attach a single bridle or motor direct to a house riggingpoint? I get only bridles with more then one leg to work.

 

Thanks in advance!

[BSeigel]

First, make sure the truss is centered directly beneath the house rigging point to ensure the greatest chance of success. Next, insert a single drop, this should attach the house rigging point to the truss. Now select the drop, go into the Object Info Palette and choose the option to replace the down leg with hoist. Let me know if you run into any issues.

[Jörgen Dohmen]

@BSeigel Thank you for your answer! That's exactly what I'm trying to do but it doesn't snap the house rigging point.

[BSeigel]

Would you mind sharing the file?

 

[TomWhiteLight]

Braceworks Insert Drop?

[Mike Wright]

Hi

 

Unfortunately the functionality you seek does not exist (despite it being a very common rigging practice).  Multiple users have pointed this out.

[jcogdell]

I'm afraid Mike is correct regarding this particular issue. Due to user feedback we are looking at how to change this and several other area's of Braceworks to both improve the workflow and better reflect real world rigging practices.

This will take time as we have to balance real world rigging practice with both structural engineering requirements and legal standards. Real world rigging practice often revolves around this is the way we have always approached this particular task and not what the legal or structural engineering standards dictate. This makes it a tough balancing act to satisfy all the competing priorities. However we are listening and we will step by step improve both rigging workflows and Braceworks, based on your feedback

 

regarding the original question

although single point bridles, deadhangs and hoists will not auto connect to a house point or I-Beam there is a work around

 

Effectively you have to use the house rigging points as a insertion guide.

 

first your house rigging point's center point has to line up perfectly with the center line of your truss,

use the snap to object function in the snapping palette for this

 

next assign the house rigging point (or points) to a separate class 

use the 'send to back' command (right click mouse menu or modify menu) so that your truss displays on top of the house point

then set the house rigging point class visibility to grey

 

select the appropriate insertion tool (bridle or hoist)

in the tool preferences set the trim height (bridle tool) or high hook height (hoist tool) to be the same as the house rigging points 'Z' coordinate

insert the bridle or hoist as normal linning it up with the greyed out house point.

the last step is to run either the system check command (if you don't have Braceworks) or one of the calculate system commands from the Braceworks menu. Vectorworks will create a new house rigging point in the correct place. You can then label it appropriately for you documentation and either delete the original house point or hide it use the class visibility settings.

 

note: if you are using the 'dead-hang' mode of the hoist tool  you will have to change the chain length in the OIP after insertion to insure that the new house rigging point will be at the correct height.

[Jörgen Dohmen]

Thank you all!

The method of @jcogdell worked.

1 little bug in my testfile: 2 house rigging points where calculated on new points made by Braceworks and the other points where calculated to the grayed points.

[jcogdell]

Hi Jörgen

glad to help, could you pm the test file?

This will help me figure out what is happening.

[Adrian ABT]

Hello everyone. So , not to mention that I am trying to log in to this forum for 10 minutes straight now, still haven't managed to, for some reason your forum does not recognize my login. 

 

jcogdell what you are basically demonstrating here is that braceworks doesn't work. Versus your promo videos i cannot even imagine doing this to 300 points. 

 

What am I supposed to do and how am I supposed to use this in a humane manner ? Because with VW 2020 I am encountering the same issue. 

 

Braceworks thinks that a truss is not supported even when all the snaps have happened. 

 

 

 

adrian@abtmotionrigs.com. please come back to me as I have a paid service select account and I really need it to worth it's money. 

[jcogdell]

Braceworks does work, it has been extensively tested and functions as designed.

There are some limitations, such as no ground support calculations (we currently have no way to perform wind loading calculations for outdoor structures) and certain specialized scenarios where you must have a structural engineer perform the calculations.

 

The issue here is that the Bridle tool and hoist tool have to follow the recommended manufacturer usage guidelines. If Spotlight does not follow these guidelines then any structural engineer who works with the calculation results will automatically fail them!

 

This means that currently hoists and dead-hangs will not connect automatically to a rigging point in the same way as a regular bridle. Current best practice for hoists and dead-hangs is to use the house rigging points as an insertion guide, you need to make sure your truss center line is centered on the point or points (snap to object works great for this) and then use the points as guides for where to insert the hoist or dead-hang (setting the high hook height or dead-hang trim height appropriately in the insertion tool preferences). Although they do not directly interact with the point, when you run a Braceworks calculation both will automatically generate a rigging point which will document all the forces acting on it, which will replace the unused original point.

 

This reflects reality, if your truss is not directly below a rigging point the truss will be pulled out of position, as it naturally balances between the points, which in turn will drastically change the forces acting on the rigging points!

And yes I know that in reality if the truss is not directly below the rigging points most onsite riggers will just move the truss into the correct position, because this is what I used to do (if there wasn't a good reason not to) when I still did rigging work.

 

Moving forwards we are going to improve this by making it possible for hoists and dead-hangs to connect with hanging points in the same way as other bridle types. However, this is not as simple as it sounds. If we just allow them to connect when they are not perfectly aligned then it not follow the manufacturers recommended usage guidelines and potentially move the truss out of position, both of which will invalidate the Braceworks calculation. This means there will have to be some specialized options for what happens when the truss and points are not aligned such as automatically moving the truss to correctly line up with the points (not always possible, if its a complex rigging system) or maybe automatically inserting per-rig,  are 2 of the possible solutions.