About Mesh and Strap Design Modes

The rebar creation offers two modes mesh and strap to create a rebar layer that keeps associativity with other reinforcing bars. Stirrups for example are reinforcing bars embracing other reinforcing bars: the stirrup profiles have to adapt when the tied profiles are changed.

This page discusses:

See Also
Creating Rebars around Existing Bars
Creating Rebars on Existing Bars

Strap Design

The Strap mode enables you to design a new rebar layer around an existing rebar layer. The aim is to create a rebar layer embracing reinforcing bars, this new layer remaining constrained on those bars.

The strap mode covers frame, stirrup and lacings shapes design:

The curvilinear pattern is proposed by default to replicate the strap bars. The curve used by the curvilinear pattern is the center curve of the first selected bar. You can change the curve as well as the pattern type in the Pattern tab. Two rules are enforced for the strap design:

  • The radius (R) of the strap bar (identified in red) is always greater than the radius (r) of the tied bar (identified in green).

  • The reinforcing bars chosen for being tied are not necessary part of the same rebar layer and then these bars can present several diameters.

Example of Rebar Tying Design

In the following picture, we consider two longitudinal rebar layers (colored purple and green) with two different diameters, four bars are tied by a frame:

Mesh Design

The Mesh mode enables you to design a new rebar layer on an existing rebar layer.

This new rebar layer can overlay the entire support layer or just a part of it :

You can define an interval of bars to restrict the new layer span. In the above example the interval was requested from bar #1 to #5. The Mesh mode also enables to restrict the bars replication of the new layer on the support layer as follows:

In this case, a curvilinear pattern is created by default and set on the new layer.



The curve chosen for this pattern is the center curve of the first bar of the support layer but it can be changed if needed. See the figure above where:

  • : Corresponds to the center curve for the curvillinear pattern.
  • : Corresponds to the pattern offset end.
  • : Shows the pattern count set to 5
  • : Corresponds to the pattern offset start.
Notes:
  • You can change the pattern type by switching to linear pattern, for example.
  • You can pick bars to change the lying side of the layer support ( First side new layer on top of support layer or second side new layer under the support layer).
  • You can change the direction of the bars created by editing the curvilinear pattern and manipulating the robot on the pattern axis so that the mesh have with non-perpendicular bars.
  • You cannot create an new rebar layer on a support containing only one bar.
Rebar layers, support layer and lying layer are associative. If the support layer is changed the overlying layer will be updated accordingly. As an example, changing the bar length and the number of bars form 8 to 5 is reflected accordingly: