Figure 1. Pile-raft foundation with piles modelled asembedded beams with different lengths
When having a complex model with a large number of embedded beams, for instance, in a pile group in a large pile raft foundation, or different types of rock bolts for a tunnelling project, the number of embedded beams can become overwhelming.
In that case, it would be great if you can easily find different groups of embedded beams to check e.g.:
Criteria to help us find these groups can be the length or the material that is assigned.
The length of an embedded beam is stored in the parent object of this object: the line object. So, we cannot display the length of an embedded beam directly, but we have to use the lines which have an embedded beam.
To generate a list with the length of the embedded beams, we can run the following tabulate command in PLAXIS 3D:
tabulate Lines "EmbeddedBeam Length" "EmbeddedBeam<>"
This works both for PLAXIS 3D Input's Structures mode and the Staged construction mode. However, this does not contain any phase activation information.
By adding the criteria for the active state to run this command in PLAXIS 3D's Staged construction mode, the command is now:
tabulate Lines "EmbeddedBeam Length EmbeddedBeam.Active" "EmbeddedBeam<>"
This will list the information for all phases; see the command executed in PLAXIS 3D 2017 below. Note that here we use the geometry from Tutorial Lesson 1(c).
0091> tabulate Lines "EmbeddedBeam Length EmbeddedBeam.Active" "EmbeddedBeam<>" Object EmbeddedBeam Length EmbeddedBeam.Active Line_6_1 InitialPhase: EmbeddedBeam_1_1 20 False Phase_1: EmbeddedBeam_1_1 20 True Phase_2: EmbeddedBeam_1_1 20 True Phase_3: EmbeddedBeam_1_1 20 True Line_7_1 InitialPhase: EmbeddedBeam_2_1 20 False Phase_1: EmbeddedBeam_2_1 20 True Phase_2: EmbeddedBeam_2_1 20 True Phase_3: EmbeddedBeam_2_1 20 True Line_8_1 InitialPhase: EmbeddedBeam_3_1 20 False Phase_1: EmbeddedBeam_3_1 20 True Phase_2: EmbeddedBeam_3_1 20 True Phase_3: EmbeddedBeam_3_1 20 True Line_9_1 InitialPhase: EmbeddedBeam_4_1 20 False Phase_1: EmbeddedBeam_4_1 20 True Phase_2: EmbeddedBeam_4_1 20 True Phase_3: EmbeddedBeam_4_1 20 True
If you are interested to see if all piles with a certain length are activated, you can also choose to make a group in Structures mode. Then you can check if all items are activated in a certain phase.
For example, you want to check for all embedded beams that have a length of 20 m, if they are activated in a phase.
The commands for this case will look like this:
groupfiltered Lines "EmbeddedBeam<>" # to get all lines embedded beams rename Groups[-1] "EmbeddedBeamLines" # change the group name to something meaningful groupfiltered EmbeddedBeamLines "Length=20" # to filter out all embedded beam lines with length = 20 rename Groups[-1] "EmbBeam_L_20" # change the group name so we know the length
Now you can check the group EmbBeam_L_20 to see if all group members are activated in the desired phase. We can see this directly from the Model Explorer, see below in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Overview of activation state of embedded beams inPhase_3 grouped by length = 20 m
Another criterion you can use is piles to which you assign a specific material. The same approach can be used here to filter these. Instead of checking for the length value, we will use the material assignment for the embedded beams, using this criterion:"EmbeddedBeam.Material=name_of_material"in which <name_of_material> is the name of the embedded beam material dataset.
The tabulate command will now be:
tabulate Lines "EmbeddedBeam Length EmbeddedBeam.Material" "EmbeddedBeam.Material=name_of_material"
We can also directly use the properties of the embedded beams (the material assignment):
tabulate EmbeddedBeams "Name Material" "Material=name_of_material"
The group-and-filter command to make a group called EmbBeams_Mat1:
groupfiltered EmbeddedBeams "Material=name_of_material" rename Groups[-1] "EmbBeams_Mat1"
Then, we can use the same approach to check if all items of this group are activated in a phase.
Note that if you e.g. want to refine the mesh locally for these embedded beams, you would need to create a group of their parent-lines.
Using the built-in command line options, we can create groups based on filtering criteria that enable us to see more details of our PLAXIS model.
Hint: If you want to get more detailed info, our Python wrapper can lead you to more detailed and filtered results.
Obtaining tabulated data from PLAXIS Input
[Tips and Tricks]
Application of commands: Groupfiltered and Apply
Using PLAXIS Remote scripting with the Python wrapper
Identify Python commands from Plaxis command line
[Python Scripts]
Access to Staged Construction settings using Python