Navigation:  Working With Beam Calculations > Wood Beam Calculations > Multiple Ply Beams

Where applicable, users may choose to create a design where multiple plys of an NDS standard section are used together to achieve structural performance.  In structural design practice, this is predominately done with dimensional lumber and occasionally with certain engineered sections (i.e., LVLs).  ENERCALC for Revit supports interoperability with the specific sections in the ENERCALC database that support multiple-ply design.

 

 

The design properties for launching a wood beam calculation include a ply quantity parameter to assist the user with constructing designs of this nature.  This ply quantity may be directly modified using the corresponding cell in the "Modify Wood Structural Properties" table.

 

 

 

Changing the ply quantity does not have any influence over the physically modeled Revit beam instance.  It does not change the 2D or 3D graphics of the physical beam element in the Revit model, nor does it alter the total number of actual beams modeled in the Revit project.  It is purely a numerical parameter that allows ENERCALC for Revit to communicate the appropriate section geometry to ENERCALC when building the calculation.  If desired, the parameter may also be referenced in schedules or quantity take-offs, since it is a Revit "Shared Parameter".  Further reading on this topic is available at the conclusion of this section.  Users should also be aware that modifying the ply quantity on a section type for which ENERCALC does not support multi-ply configurations (i.e., glulam beams) will result in an error when attempting to launch the calculation.

 

If the lumber ply quantity was changed using the "Modify Wood Properties" menu, the new value will be displayed in a parameter in the beam's "Properties" pane:

 

 

 

 

Rather than using default sections with parametric ply indicators, a design team may alternatively choose to use custom beam sections which represent accurate geometry and graphical appearance of a multiple-ply beam:

 

 

 

 

In such cases, the multiple-ply beam sections should be named using the exact same naming convention as that used for the corresponding multiple-ply beam option in the ENERCALC database in order to ensure interoperability.  Any divergence in naming convention or use of a multiple-ply section not found in the ENERCALC database will result in an error when attempting to build the calculation.

 

 

 

 

When the ply quantity is written directly into the name of the custom multiple-ply section, the parameter "ENERCALC - Wood Ply Qty" should always be set to a value of 1 (see below).

 

 

 

In this case, the "1" will be ignored and the appropriate ply quantity will instead be inferred directly from the section name.  For example, in the case above, EFR will automatically recognize that the above section label "2-2x10" is a 2-ply beam made of 2x10 dimension lumber.

 

Use of any value other than 1 in such cases will result in EFR attempting to use a section name obtained by using the literal name of the beam instance prefixed with the ply quantity specified in the parameter.  For example:  2-2-2x10:

 

 

 

 

 

When a calculation is launched using a valid multiple-ply beam section name, the calculation will populate in the ENERCALC interface the same way, regardless of whether it was generated from a custom section or from a default section with a quantity parameter:

 

 

 

 

 

If the user then selects a single-ply section type in the ENERCALC interface, the ply qty parameter on the Revit element will automatically revert to a value of "1" when the "Save and Close" operation concludes.  

 

Conversely, the user may choose to select a new multiple-ply section size:

 

 

 

 

 

In this case, the following steps will occur during the "Save and Close" operation:

 

1.EFR will search both the current .rvt project AND the appropriate loadable content directories for a section whose type name is a perfect match for the literal name sent from ENERCALC.  If a custom section having the desired name is found, EFR will apply it automatically:

 

 

 

 

 

2.If a section of the desired multiple-ply name is not found either in the project OR in the appropriate loadable content directories, then EFR will apply updates to the Revit model using the default single-ply section, coupled with an appropriate ply quantity parameter:

 

 

 

 

 

ENERCALC for Revit provides a structural tag family for easy documentation on plans and other views for situations where a multiple-ply beam has been designed using the ply quantity parameter: