Steel Structures

ImPLANT-I comes with a facility for transferring steel structures from MicroStation Design files to Marine/Design through the Marine catalogue mechanism, using the Structure/Framework/ Section hierarchy of PDMS. This involves the following stages:

Note: Steps 2 and 3 are not necessary if you know which profiles are used.

1. ImPLANT-I.exe is supplied with two macro files defining the British Standard and DIN profiles included in the standard MarineCatalogue Database:

   • profiles_british.imp

   • profiles_din.imp

     These may be passed to ImPLANT-I.exe by the usual command processor $m mechanism; for example:

     $m/profiles_british.imp

2. Run ImPLANT-I.exe using the REPORTSTEEL ON command for discovering any possible steel structures (include profiles_british.imp and/or profiles_din.imp if appropriate). ImPLANT-I responds with one or more possible Steel Structure profiles.

3. Look at the shapes of the reported profiles and decide if they match existing profiles held in the catalogue. If some profiles do not exist, you may create corresponding Catalogue components in the Catalogue database by, for example, using the PARAGON module. If you choose not to create corresponding Catalogue components, ImPLANT-I.exe will still import the objects, but not as Sections.

4. Create a macro containing the corresponding data that defines the profiles included in the Catalogue.

5. Rerun ImPLANT-I.exe and this time run the macro created by Step 4 (and any standard macro required). For PDMS transfers this will generate less data and so will speed up the process.

6. The Design macro file created can be entered into Marine/Design through the DESIGN module.

   Note: The user will need to create the Catalogue components and the corresponding Profile macro file once only. You can then use this file again when necessary.