About Bolt Patterns

Bolt patterns can be inserted in any plane and depend on the current coordinate system.

Bolts

Bolt, anchor, hole and shear stud patterns create connections between individual Advance objects, for example beam-plate or plate-plate. The respective connection elements and properties are stored and managed by Advance Steel.

Holes are created automatically when bolts are inserted. There is an intelligent link between bolts and holes, so that bolts automatically create the right holes, e.g. a countersunk bolt automatically creates a countersunk hole with the corresponding parameters.

Note: If a bolt pattern is deleted the hole pattern is also deleted. You can view the hole properties in the hole dialog box, but you cannot change them, as they are controlled by the bolt itself.

Holes

You can insert hole patterns without bolts. You can insert round holes, slotted holes, countersunk holes, blind holes, threaded holes and punch marks.

Holes, like process features, are dependent objects and are displayed in green in the model and are only visible when the object they are inserted in, is displayed using the Features or Exact presentation types. To address or change hole objects (using Advance Properties) or to delete them, they must be visible in the model.

Shear Studs

You can insert shear studs in the model the same way as bolts, having the same options for displaying and editing. Holes are dependent on their reference object regarding their representation type.

Note: In the center of the shear stud pattern (intersecting point of the rectangle's diagonals) a weld point is inserted. It connects the studs to a beam or a plate and must not be deleted.

Bolt, hole, anchor and shear stud patterns have a Behavior property tab that describes if and how the element numbers are part of the structured BOM.

Bolts and shear studs are created in the color cyan (by default) as individual Advance Steel elements and can be modified as needed. Changes in the bolt pattern will also automatically update the holes.

All four connection object types (bolt patterns, anchor patterns, hole patterns and shear stud patterns) are created using the same commands. See Create Connection Object Patterns.