Since shapes are shown in full scale during detailing, they may sometimes be very long and not fit in the drawing. Under certain circumstances, you might deliberately want to have some, out-of-scale shapes (lengthwise) in your drawing, e.g., if large areas of the components do not have any drill holes or similar features. The 2D Shortening command allows you to shorten finished 2D shapes in a way that areas with many details remain unchanged and a break is inserted in an insignificant area. This document will assist you on how to use the 2D Shortening tool to fit long parts / members in a limited space by adding a shortening / break symbol in the 2D drawing of the part.
1) In your 2D drawing, you first need to first to dissolve any blocks of the inserted 2D details (if present), before you can go on. You can do this by ticking off the checkmarks in the ‘Selectable’ column in the ‘Named Groups’ dialog box. 2) After this, click on the ‘2D Shortening’ command under Steel > Drawing Production > Detailing 3) The application will then prompt you to select the part that you want to shorten and then define 2 points for recognizing the length in the member that needs to be shortened. 4) Alternatively, you can also choose the ‘Automatic shortening’ option in which case the shortening is automatically determined and carried out, as it is the case for detailing. 5) After this, the shape will get shortened and a shortening symbol will get added in the middle of the shape. In this manner, you can manually shorten steel shapes by inserting a break in the 2D shape without affecting structural details.