Advanced Beam and Pile Selection

Advanced Selection is a feature to address difficulties in tracking down the beam and pile information and manually selecting the beams and piles that are of interest; and even assist in efficient data retrieval. This can be accessed by selecting any Beam or Pile Result entity and clicking the Advanced Selection button under Properties pane. This feature is also accessible from Interpret > Advanced Beam & Pile Selection.

The Advanced Selection tab appears with a table that shows a list of all beams and piles in the model with the location, Support Property, installation and removal stage, and Support Type for each. Based on these items, users can control beam and pile result visualization and conduct data analysis on beam and pile behaviour through selecting/filtering the beam and pile result entities in forms of manual selection or conditional statements.

Sorting, Grouping, Choosing, and Fitting

The Advanced Selection table can be customized in many ways. By right clicking on a column, users can sort, group, hide/unhide columns, and fit the columns by the length of text. Sorting can be applied in ascending or descending order, and be cleared by right clicking and selecting Clear Sorting.

Grouping refers to categorization of beam and pile data within the table generated under Advanced Selection tab. By default, beam and pile results are separated into a Beam Group and a Pile Group. Grouping can be customized by selecting the Group By This Column function, or by enabling the Show Group Panel, then dragging and dropping a column into the Group Panel as seen below. To remove a grouping, ensure the Group Panel is enabled, and remove all columns by dragging them out of the panel, or right click the Group Panel and select Clear Group Panel to remove all groupings. The Group Panel can be hidden by right clicking a column and selecting Hide Group Panel.

Columns can be hidden through the Column Chooser. Right click on a column and select Show Column Chooser. A Column Chooser dialog box will appear. To hide columns, uncheck the tick boxes to the left of the column items.

The spacing of the columns can be controlled manually by hovering over the edge of a column. By right clicking on a column, users can choose to Best Fit a certain column or to Best Fit (all columns)

Filter

A filter icon appears from hovering over a column title. Clicking the icon provides users basic filtering conditions. There are two basic forms of filter: Filter Values and Filter Rules. To create more advanced filtering conditions the Filter Editor can be used. Previously applied filters can also be found from Filter History.

FILTER VALUES

Filter Values allows users to select specific beam and pile result entities paired with the data entered under that column. It can be done by typing in the search box or scrolling from the ordered list. To clear the filter, click the Clear Filter button.

FILTER RULES

Filter Rules option has a range of operators to choose from depending on the type of data (numerical or non-numerical) stored under the chosen column. Filtering is applied that satisfies a rule defined by an operator and operand. For example, one can create a filter rule to show the beam and pile result data for those with x coordinate location equal to 0.

FILTER EDITOR

To open the Filter Editor, right click on a column and select the Filter Editor icon . With respect to the selected Boolean expression, wherein And is set as a default, different forms of conditions can be added to filter the beam and pile result entities. Conditions can be added by clicking the drop down beside the button. It provides options to Add Condition, Add Group, or Add Custom Expression. The simplest form of condition is formed by a line of conditional statement, which can be generated by Add Condition or simply clicking the button. To define the Condition:

• Select the Column Name (e.g., Installation Stage) to query

• Select the Operator (e.g., Is less than)
• Select the Operand (e.g., 1)

Add Group function provides an option to form a group of several conditional statements satisfied by a Boolean expression.

Add Custom Expression function provides a more flexible option to generate a conditional statement, which allows to add mathematical functions and constants to the conditional statement. Clicking the Enter Expression box will navigate the user to Expression Editor dialog, where the user can type the equations or construct one from the tabs available.

Let us create an example to only filter beams and piles with an installation stage equal to 1 and an x coordinate either between 0 to 3 or 6 to 10.

1. Clear all filters such that only a red And box is shown
2. Select the upside-down triangle, click on Add Group, set Group = Or clicking on the red box
3. Beside the red And box select the upside-down triangle, click on Add Custom Expression
   1. Click on the Enter Expression box and write the following “[Installation Stage] = 1”
   2. Click OK
4. Beside the red Or box select the upside-down triangle, click on Add Condition
   1. Click the orange box and set the column to X
   2. Click the blue box and set the operator to Is between
   3. Click the first green box and set the first constant to 0, set the second constant to 3
5. Beside the red Or box select the upside-down triangle, click on Add Condition
   1. Click the orange box and set the column to X
   2. Click the blue box and set the operator to Is between
   3. Click the first green box and set the first constant to 6, set the second constant to 10
6. Click the Apply button

FILTER HISTORY

To return to a previous executed filter condition, click on the Filter History button . This will display any previously run filters and can be reselected by clicking on them.