Member Viewing Groups

Member Viewing Groups differ from Frame Views in that they allow you to specify which members are to be included in the group. While Frame Views will display all members within a specified region, viewing groups are created by selecting specific members, hence it is possible to have a viewing group which includes members arranged over a wide range of the model but without including all other members within this range as would occur with a frame view. Because the Member Viewing Groups are defined on members, they do not affect the display of FE surfaces.

The Member Viewing Groups menu.

Selecting the Member Viewing Group item from the Viewing drop down menu will open the Member Viewing Groups menu panel. This is located on the right hand side of the screen.

To Open the Member Viewing Groups pane

1.Select the Viewing item from the main tool bar at the top of the screen

2.In the list of drop down items, click Member Viewing Group.

To Create a Member Viewing Group

1.Open the Member Viewing Groups

2.Click the Add New Group icon

3.Provide a title for the Member Viewing Group in the text field at the top of the pane

4.Click the Add/Remove Items icon

5.Select the members you wish in include in the group. The member numbers of those members selected will appear in the right hand pane. For non-3D views, members selected will also highlight in red.

6.To remove a member, simply select the member in the graphics window again.

7.Multiple members can be selected by holding the left mouse button and windowing around the required members.

8.The view filters, pan, zoom and Frame Views can be used to reduce the graphical view to desired part of the structure to aid in the selection of a Member Viewing Group.

To Clear a Member Viewing Group of Members

To clear a single Member Viewing Group of its members:

1.Open the Member Viewing Groups

2.Select the Member Viewing Group from the drop down at the top of the pane

3.Click the Clear Current Group button

a)To clear all Member View Groups, click the Clear All Groups button

To Delete a Member Viewing Group

To delete a Member Viewing Group:

1.Open the Member Viewing Groups

2.Select the Member Viewing Group from the drop down at the top of the pane

3.Click the Delete Current Group button

a)To delete all Member Viewing Groups, click the Delete All Groups button . The software will ask for a confirmation before carrying out the Delete All function.

Using Member Viewing Groups

Member Viewing Groups can be used in Masterframe to view selected parts or the model. These can be accessed through the View Filters drop down menu.

The View Filter gives a number of options for controlling the graphical display of the model. By selecting the desired viewing group, the graphical view on screen can be filtered to a Member Viewing Group by ticking that viewing group in the drop down. There are a number of options available for viewing the member groups:-

1.Use this filter for labelling only - this option does not filter the members displayed, but acts as a filter on the graphically displayed labels. For example, using this option in conjunction with the section labels will mean only the members in the selected member viewing group will have a section label displayed.

2.Multi-Select Member Viewing Groups - allows multiple member viewing groups to be selected. The default setting is for a single member viewing group to be selected at any one time.

3.Hide Selected Member Viewing Group - rather than displaying a selected member viewing group, this option will hide the selected member viewing group

Appearing below these three option will be the user created member viewing groups. The user name will be displayed to identify the viewing group.

Note: The Member Viewing Groups will control only the 1D member elements on any model. The displayed of FE surfaces are not affected by the member viewing groups. Therefore, in models with 1D elements and FE surfaces, it may be necessary to use a combination of Member Viewing Groups and Finite Element Surface Filters when wanting to restrict the view of a model to a particular part of the structure.

When using the Member Viewing Groups, it is important to remember that the tick box on the parent item "Member Viewing Groups" must be ticked along with the desired selection of viewing options. Ticking and un-ticking this item turns the member viewing groups filter on and off but does not clear the secondary selections.

Member Viewing Groups can also be selected within various design modules, to filter the view of the model to a specific member viewing groups. This allows the automatic design functions to be used to size specific viewing groups to use the same section size.