IES ShapeBuilder User's Guide
Project Settings
Access the project settings by going to when nothing is selected. Click on the background of the Sketch View to unselect everything.
When your shape contains multiple parts of different materials, you can choose which material to use as the base, or denominator for the modular transformed section properties. By default, the first shape you create sets this base material.
This setting allows you to take charge of how to process the shape parts to construct the final shape for analysis. The flattened model is shown in the Analysis View. Examine the flattened shape to ensure that the shape is analyzed as expected.
Auto: Let ShapeBuilder flatten the model. ShapeBuilder will try to correctly merge touching parts, remove overlaps, and subtract holes. Shape parts (including holes) may overlap and holes may be used to create notches.
Manual: You are responsible for flattening the model. This setting allows you to 'take control' of flattening if the software is not producing the model that you want. In the manual mode, you are required to remove overlaps and to merge touching shapes. This option is useful when trying to model a shape part that is completely contained within a hole, for example.
You may control the automated finite element mesh generator for situations where the artificial intelligence gets confused by the special geometry of your shapes. You can improve performance of analysis by adjusting these settings to create a more intelligent element distribution in the shapes.