You may have encountered an issue when running a truss of finding that a particular plate, sometimes even a very large plate, is being used on all of your joints, even where it is not needed. This typically occurs when either a new plate has been added, or something else has happened to the plate inventory. In either case, we will need to look in iSource to find the solution.
In iSource, the plates in your inventory are given an "Upgrade Order" to determine the order in which the software checks which plate will work for a particular joint. When a new plate is added, it is automatically given an upgrade order of 0. As you can see in the image above, the SS1324 plate has just been added and as such it does have 0 as its upgrade order. See below what happens when we plate a truss using this inventory.
Not precisely what we would normally want. To resolve this, we simply need to apply a more appropriate upgrade order to the newly added plate. If you know where you want it to be placed, you can manually change the order number, but you can also sort the plates as a whole and then reset the order to match the way they are sorted/displayed. If your plates all have costs applied to them, then the simplest thing to do is click on the "Cost" column header to sort by cost in an ascending order. You can then click on the "Save Order" button at the bottom of your iSource window. As mentioned before, this will reset the upgrade order of the plates to what is currently displayed, so be careful when using the button. I the above scenario, however, we have corrected the issue and the truss will now plate normally.
Even if you have not recently added a plate, a similar issue may still be at play. The reason we must be careful using the Save Order button is because, we had the plates sorted according to part name, or width, or some other column for the purposes of easily viewing the inventory, and then clicked the Save Order button by mistake, the we would likely end up in a similar situation, with incorrect and oversized plates being used where other, cheaper plates will suffice. The solution is the same, however. Sort in the way we intend, often using the cost column, and click the Save Order button to reset.
As always, close and re-launch iModel or iDesign if you have it open to pick up the changes. You should find your plating issues resolved, but it is important to note that if you had already run and saved your trusses with the incorrect plates, they may not change if you have your job settings set up in a particular way.
As seen above, you will typically want your "For re-running of previously run trusses" setting set to "None", as the other settings can cause the oversized, or in some cases even undersized plates to remain. Setting to "None" and then re-running the trusses after making the above inventory changes should fully resolve your issues!
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