ORION 18: HOW TO START OFF A PROJECT

In this tutorial, we are going to prepare our software for the modelling of our structure.

This stage will involve selecting the design code, the sheet size and type, as well as drawing the axis lines for the placement of structural members.

To do this, we will follow the steps as outlined below.

Step 1

Run the installed CSC Orion 18 software. Close the quick guide, then click on ‘New Project’. At this stage, we give the Project a name (Let’s call this one ‘Learning Orion’). Click ‘OK’.

Step 2

After giving the Project a name, a ‘Settings Center’ dialog box appears for you to select a design code. For the sake of this tutorial, we will choose ‘UK (BS 8110)’. Be sure that all the parameters to the right under ‘Current Project Settings’ are ticked so as to be able to carry out every activity listed there over the course of the Project. Click ‘Import’

Step 3

 After selecting a code, the ‘Sheet Data’ dialog box appears. In this dialog box, we select our sheets (use a standard or customized sheet size), pick the origin of the structure and select a scale.

Under ‘Standard Sheets’, select ‘A2 (594 X 420)’. The sheet size is automatically displayed in the sheet size dialog box. Click ‘Pick Sheet Origin’, then click a point inside the sheet (indicated in the drawing area by a green rectangle), close to the bottom left corner of the sheet. Change the ‘Drawing Scale’ to 1/100.

Click ‘OK’ to start the new project.

Step 4

Next, we draw our axes lines for positioning our columns. To do that, we Left click, then Right click, on ‘Axes’ in the layer toolbar on the left side of the User Interface (UI). Among the options that appear, Click ‘Orthogonal Axis Generator’.

The Orthogonal Axes Generator draws a number of vertical and horizontal axes lines according to a predetermined pattern, which we will see in step 5.

After clicking ‘Orthogonal Axes Generator’, a ‘cross shaped’ mouse pointer appears. Using this pointer, click a point near the bottom left of the drawing sheet to pick the ‘lower left reference point of the Axes Group’.

Step 5

In the ‘Orthogonal Axes Generator’ dialog box that appears, under ‘Dir-1 Axes’, change the ‘Axis Label’ to [1], the ‘Axis Spacing(s)’ to [8000,6000], and leave the ‘Axis Extension Length’ as [2000]. All dimensions are in mm.

Next, we move to ‘Dir-2 Axes’. Under ‘Dir-2 Axes’, change the ‘Axis Label’ to [A], the ‘Axis Spacing(s)’ to [5000*8] and leave the ‘Axis Extension Length’ as [2000]. Click ‘OK’.