Listing composite skin thickness in unit other than set calculation unit.

[Rastko Pecar]

Hi,

I would like to create a property that reads the thickness parameter of skins that form composite structures and convert it from my default calculation unit (meters) to centimeters in my schedules. I went to property manager and when I wanted to create an expression for conversion, I cant find the component thickness parameter. Can anyone help?

I don't want to change my calculation units as a global setting because I use meters for all my quantity takeoffs and I need centimeters just for this specific case.

Ideas appreciated!

Operating system used: Windows 10,0,22631 build 22631

[Rastko Pecar]

Yes, the important thing is to do this kind of schedule as a component schedule (scheme settings, left column).

The next thing are the field settings, which should contain the parameters as seen on the print screen:

The important thing is to list "component thickness parametes", not "thickness" as a general parametes.

Instead of "description" maybe first use "building material" property. I use "description" because my bmats naming convention contains some information that I don't want to be reported. Similarily my naming convention is made to order my bmats library, not specifiing materials. Thats why I use "description".

One thing to keep in mind with this schedule is that you have to apply a filter to your model elements so, that only one element of each composite is captured by the schedule, otherwise it will start summing up particular skins (if you have 10 cms of insulation and 10 walls in your model, your insulation thickness will be registered as 100 cms, which is wrong). In the schedule above this filtering function is applied via a custom property that I created, called "sample" of a true/false type and I asign only one model element for each composite to avoid skin thickness summation. Another way of doing this is to place such "sample" walls, slabs, roofs into a dedicated design option and then apply the filter in the scheme settings or view settings. You can check this link for this controlling thickness units here.

Hope this helps, cheers!