Fabrication Process Organizer

1. Purpose and description

This tool allows users to easily find steel parts in the model requiring specific types of shop
labor copes, bevel cut ends, holes, and shop welding. This tool will also set a user defined
attribute value on the parts making it easy to colorize, filter, organize, and report parts in the
model based on their fabrication process. This is especially useful for fabrication estimation
and organizing drawings, CNC files, and BOM reports to match preferred shop process
routing.

2. System requirements
Tekla Structures version: 17.0
.NET Framework version: 4.0
Environments: Default
Languages: English

3. Installation
To install the application:
1. Close down Tekla Structures (if running)
2. Download the appropriate MSI Installer (x64 for 64 bit machine and 64bit
installation of Tekla Structures)
3. Install MSI Installer
4. Start up Tekla Structures
5. Drag and dock the new toolbar that will have an icon similar to below.

Copyright 2011 Tekla Corporation August 2011

4. Usage
To use the application:
1. Start the tool by clicking the icon on the toolbar or by going to the Tools>Macros
menu within Tekla Structures, selecting the Fabrication Process Organizer in the
list, and pressing the Run button.
2. Check the desired options to find parts that contain holes, copes, bevel cut ends,
or shop welds.
3. Select Main Parts Only or All Parts.
4. If you wish to see a report displayed with the parts that meet the selected criteria,
check the Show report option. Otherwise, the report will be created in a new
Fabrication Process Reports folder inside the model folder.
5. Click Create from All or select model objects and click Create from Selected.

When selecting, make sure Select Objects in Components is

pressed down to also highlight connection material and other parts.

6. The resulting report will show parts that share all of the selected/checked
properties. For example if both Copes and Holes are checked, only parts with
both those operations will be reported, but parts with only holes but no copes or
parts with copes but no holes will not be reported.
7. To get a visual representation of the parts requiring shop processes, click the
Color by Process button.

5. Additional information
A new objects.inp file has been included to provide a new Fabrication Process tab
so parts that are found to have copes, holes, beveled ends or shop welds will be
tagged with a User-Defined Attribute.
Whenever the tool is run, it will try to copy the special objects.inp file that contains the
Fabrication Process tab and user defined attributes directly into the model folder. If
there is an existing objects.inp file there, it will not overwrite the existing one, it will
just copy it into the model folder with the name objects_FabricationProcess.inp. You
will then be required to manually merge Fabrication Process tab page into your
existing objects.inp files. After the objects.inp file is copied into your model folder
upon the first launch of the tool, you will need to close the Fabrication Process
Organizer, and reopen your model in order for the new tab page to appear in the User
Defined Attributes dialog box.

Copyright 2011 Tekla Corporation August 2011

 Note that the UDA will be applied to all parts meeting any of the
checked criteria regardless if they are displayed in the Final
combined report.

A new object representation setting Color_by_Fabrication_Process has been

added to show the objects in the model based on the above UDA tags. They are as
follows:

Copyright 2011 Tekla Corporation August 2011