Contour - Tabular Edition

Open the Contour dialog, which lets you edit contours that define panels and contours to which a planar load is applied, by clicking on the Polyline - Contour dialog. All contour coordinates and parameters are displayed in tabular form. Parameters in the table are the parameters of a contour that is currently active in the Polyline - Contour dialog.

The Contour dialog can also be opened from a load table, when defining the following load types:

• Uniform planar load on a contour
• Planar load defined by 3 points on a contour

Note: You can edit polylines and contours defined by polylines. However, you cannot edit contours defined by objects such as, arcs, circles, or rectangles.

A polyline or a contour consists of many segments and arcs.

Segment parameters include:

• Coordinates of the beginning and end points of a segment
• If needed, fillet of a connection with the next segment (when Fillet is selected).

Arc parameters include:

• Coordinates of the points defining an arc
• The way of dividing an arc into straight-line segments that approximate the arc.

The following contour information is available in the table:

• The number of parts of the contour
• Type - Determines the type of the next part; a contour or polyline definition can include the following part types:
  • Segment: A segment defined by specifying X, Y, and Z coordinates for the beginning and end points of a segment.
  • Arc: An arc based on 3 points. The beginning and end points of an arc are determined by specifying X, Y, and Z coordinates; the midpoint of an arc is defined by specifying XR, YR, and ZR coordinates.
• X, Y, Z - Coordinates of the consecutive points for segments or for the beginning and end of an arc.
• XR, YR, ZR - Coordinates of points determining the midpoint in an arc definition. If the part is a segment, these table cells are not available.
• Fillet - Radius of a fillet between consecutive contour segments
• Arc discretization - How the arc or fillet is divided:
  • Fixed number - Segment of an arc or fillet is divided into as many straight-line parts as specified by Number of edges.
  • Full angle - A full angle (360 degrees) that is, a circle is divided by the specified number of edges and the part resulting from the division of the full angle is used to divide an arc segment into straight-line parts.
• Division number - The number of segments into which an arc or fillet is divided in discretization by segments.

Note: The number of available coordinates depends on the type of structure selected:

• Coordinates Z and ZR are unavailable for the following structure types:Plate and Grillage.
• Coordinates Y and YR are unavailable for the following structure types:2D Frame, 2D Truss, Plane Stress Structures, Plane Deformation Structures, and axisymmetric structures.

Right-clicking inside the table of the Contour dialog displays a shortcut menu. It has several options for editing contour parameters and managing the information that is displayed.

The following are available from the shortcut menu:

• Standard editing tools (Cut,Copy, Paste)
• Fill Special has advanced editing features that edits the contents of a column, as in other Robot tables. It is available when you select a column or part of it. Rows are selected with the Ctrl key pressed.
• Insert inserts rows. The default type of inserted rows is segment.
• Delete deletes rows.
• Table Columns opens the Columns dialog.