Vertical Attachment

I was recently asked by a few people how to constrain the top of a column to the bottom of beam.

Actually, columns could be attached not only to beams but also to roofs and floors. Also it is not only the top of columns that can be attached to floors, roofs and beams, but also the bottom of columns. So we are talking about 6 situations. For each of the 6 situations, we have 9 configurations so we have a total of 54 cases

For this post I am going to present only the 9 configurations related to top of columns attached to bottom of beams.

In the following, target can be a floor, a roof or a beam and I will be using beams for the illustrations.

In order to better understand the different available options, I use a slopped beam:

 

In order to attach a column to another member, you need to select the column and in the option bar you get the attach/detach options:

 

Select Attach and you get the following options:

 

The tables below describes all the combinations for the 3 Attachment Styles and the 3 Attachment Justifications.

Justification Style	Minimum Intersection
Cut Column
Cut Target
Do not cut
Justification Style	Intersect Column Midline
Cut Column
Cut Target
Do not cut
Justification Style	Maximum Intersection
Cut Column
Cut Target
Do not cut

In order to detach the column, you need to select it again and use either [Detach All] if top and bottom are attached or just [Detach] and select the target

To restore the original geometry, change the [Top Offset] property to zero in the column dialog box:

Nicolas