SkyCiv has built out a range of features that make the modeling process extremely and fast and easy. One of these great sets of mouse click functions, that once used to, can allow users to mock up a model with a few clicks.

  Follow Us on YouTube There are a range of tools that you can choose from. These can be accessed by clicking the pen icon  to launch the following great tools:

Click the pen icon  to access these different mouse controls

Default Tool

The default tool, denoted by the cross-hair mouse icon, has the following features:

• Click + Drag between nodes to create a member. Hold a number to create a member with that number’s section ID:
• With Plates menu open: Click between nodes to create a plate:
• Hold CTRL + Drag to multi-select:
• Rotating – Left click and drag to rotate your structure.
• Panning – Right-click and drag to pan. Alternatively, use Shift + Left Click.
• Zooming – Scroll mouse forward/back to zoom in/out of the model.
• Select – Left click a member/node/plate/support/load.
• Multi Select – Ctrl + Left Click.
• Create Member – Left click starting node, drag to ending node, and release on ending node.
• Click member, node, or any other object to view/edit/delete
• Click member to view that result only (Post Solve Only)
• Ctrl + Click: Multiple Object Select
• Scroll + S: Scale Result/Loads

Note: If zooming not working on Chrome, try checking extensions

Draw Tool

• Hover or click a node, this will become your Reference Node, from here you can use the Snap/Grid to plot a node:
• With the Connect Member tickbox selected, you can both drop a node and connect the nodes as a member:
  
• The Length box will auto display the length of the distance from the reference node (and hence the length of the member). At any point you can enter a length and hit Enter, or click, to apply that member length.
• Enter a length and click the  (lock) icon to lock the length. Now you can create members fixed at this length.

Grab Tool

• Click and drag a node to move it and snap it to a point of reference:
  

Right Click (Quick) Repairs

SkyCiv has introduced a couple of quick repair functions that allow users to easily detect and repair issues with your model. This is slightly different from SkyCiv’s Repair Model functionality which will repair your entire model. This is focused on your highlighted elements that the user can easily identify. For instance, two nodes closely together can be merged using the Merge Nodes feature. Here is the full list of quick repairs that are automatically detected by the software when you highlight and right-click parts of your structure.

Merge Nodes

Notice you have two nodes that are really close. It’s a fairly common problem and may cause disconnects in your model. Simply highlight the nodes (CTRL + CLICK & DRAG) then right-click and click Merge Nodes:

Intersecting Members

Sometimes members can be drawn over one another. Although difficult to notice, these can have disastrous effects on your model, as that model will have a double up and will overestimate the strength of that member (by a factor of 2). Simply highlight the overlapping members and right-click. The software will automatically detect the members as overlapping. To repair this simply clicks Merge Overlapping Members to merge the two members. It should look something like this:

Overlapping Members

Sometimes you want to split (and connect) members by their intersection. Remember, members are only connected if they have a common node. So if you have two intersecting members with no common node, they are not connected. Again, highlight the members and right-click to repair this and add a node at the point of their intersection. To do this, simply right-click and click Intersect Members. This will add a node at the intersection and separate the members into smaller elements:

Split Member

A useful tool that allows you to add a node and split the member based on some input. Members can be split based on intersecting nodes, intersecting members, number of sections, or at a location along with the member:

Have any other issues you’d like to have added to this list? Let us know at [email protected]

Copy and Paste

Sometimes, there are parts of the structure that repeat at different locations and the duplicate functionality is not enough for speeding up the process. Having the possibility of easily copying and pasting parts of the structure to the same model or to a new one can help to save a lot of time during modeling. The copy and paste functionality works pretty similarly to how it works in a text editor, the first step is to select what to copy and hit Ctrl+C (⌘ + C in Mac), then decide and select the place where it is going to be pasted, and finally hit Ctrl+V (⌘ + V in Mac) to paste it to the desired location. When using Ctrl+C (⌘ + C in Mac), the software will automatically pick the reference point (the closest to the origin), alternatively, hitting Ctrl+Shift+C (⌘ + Shift + C in Mac) will wait for the user to select the reference node on the screen.

Copying the model as text

Given that the model of the structure in S3D is represented in the background by a JSON object, once Ctrl+C (⌘ + C in Mac) the software will write the representation of the selected model in JSON format to the clipboard. It is possible to paste that information to any text editor, either for developing purposes or to quickly edit the model by searching and replacing some text.