Material, mass, and volume of CIM

The general Cast-in Material properties page has been extended with properties for material, volume, and mass. This of course also means that any previous properties of mass found in dynamic CIM, and lattice girders property pages are removed.

Note that the volume is specified as “Displacement volume” which means the volume of the element’s material that is removed, i.e. the element volume is reduced with this volume. To the right of the volume is a button “Update volume” which when pushed gets the volume of all solids found in one of the dwg files for the Cast-in Material with the level of detail “4 3D”. To the right of the mass properties is a button “Update mass” which when pushed calculates the mass based on the density of the selected material and the volume of the Cast-in Material.

Note that for Cast-in Materials with a length, such as Dynamic Cast-in Materials, Linear Cast-in Materials (with no geometry), Lattice girders, End stops, Recess boxes, the volume and mass should be specified by meter.

The reason for the change is to be able to improve the volume and mass calculation of the elements, by reducing the volume of concrete and adding the mass of cast-in materials. Another benefit is to get an accurate mass of different materials in an element which can improve the calculations done by the environmental module.

By introducing the mass and volume for Cast-in Materials, the previous reduction of the concrete volume for the lattice girders in Form slabs and Double walls is seen as obsolete and removed.

Another effect of this change is that the question “Update lift” will be asked more often since adding/removing Cast-in Materials can possibly affect the mass of the element.

As for now some types of cast-in materials are seen as negligible therefore are not considered for the volume and mass calculation of the element and these are endcap CIM, opening CIM, wall ties, and ducts, ducts however reduce the mass and volume of the element since they are subtracted from the element's solid.