Navigation:  Working With Beam Calculations > Beam Parent / Child Relationships > Working With Beam Systems

A beam system is a native Revit method to create a group of framing elements that have a common parametric relationship with each other.  Beam systems are often used to accelerate work and enhance collective geometry control when modeling large repetitive beam framing systems.  Since beam systems are often used to create many beams with similar geometry and spacing, ENERCALC for Revit detects the presence of beam systems during calculation launch to assist the user with bulk design of many similar elements.  

When the beam to be designed is found to be a member of a beam system, the calculation launch window will prompt the user to decide if other members of the beam system should be made children of the main beam.  The presence of a beam system is noted at the beginning of calculation when an additional approval tab is added to the launch window.

When the other required approvals have been completed, the user will be presented with several options for working with the beam system members as potential children.  Any member of the beam system not already designed or associated to another calculation will be proposed to the user as a potential child element.

Clicking the “Confirm Suggested Children” button will accept all available members of the beam system as children of the main beam to be designed.  Alternatively, the user may choose to click “Select Children Manually”, which triggers a Revit multi-select operation similar to that used for the other manual select options during calculation launch.  Choosing either of the first two options will result in the specified beams taking on a parent/child relationship with the beam being launched.  If the “Copy Reactions” option is checked on during calculation launch, the user will be prompted to resolve any support discrepancies found while creating the parent/child associations (as described in “Parent/Child Similarity”).

Cancelling during a manual select or choosing the “Skip” option will launch the calculation without any associated children.  In this case, the remainder of the beam system will not be affected by the design of the beam currently being launched.

When the “Save and Close” operation in ENERCALC SEL completes, all specified children will have the same section size as the designed beam (as well as reactions if checked on).