116 — Beam Pocket

A beam pocket is the notch a roof or floor beam bears into. You will not find it on a menu, and that is not an oversight: in ConstructiVision a beam pocket is a recess with Z Offset 0.

Tutorial 103 introduces the dialog. This lesson is the one setting that turns a recess into a pocket.

Note

This lesson is AutoCAD-only. ConstructiVision on the web has no equivalent today — the browser page for this lesson explains why, so you are not left hunting for a feature that is not there.

Where it is

Recess and Blockout Details — the same dialog as lesson 103. Each row is one pocket.

The dialog is paged. You see six rows at a time, but it holds thirty, reached through the page tabs (1-6, 7-12, 13-18, 19-24, 25-30). If you fill the visible six and need a seventh, you are not at the limit — turn the page.

The row

field	what it is	worked value on AAA039 (7 1/4” thick)
Enable	turns the row on	ticked
Shape		Rectangle
Measure From	which side Distance is measured from	L
Distance	where along the panel the beam lands, to the pocket’s near side	8'-0"
Elevation	the bearing height, to the bottom of the pocket	16'-0"
Width	sized for the beam, not the panel	1'-0"
Height		1'-4"
Thickness	how deep — less than the panel. It starts at the panel’s thickness with Full ticked: untick Full, then type the depth	4"
Z Offset	0 — this is the one that matters	0

On AAA039 that row draws the pocket with the note 4” Deep Recess Dn, elevation markers 16’-0” BO and 17’-4” BO, and the chain 8’-0”, 1’-0”, 19’-0” across the panel.

Thickness less than the panel is what keeps it a pocket. Take it all the way through and you have a blockout — a hole — not a bearing surface. Lesson 103 covers that distinction.

Z Offset 0 starts the recess at the face rather than set in behind it, which is what a beam needs to bear on.

Why there is no “Beam Pocket” button

Because there is nothing for it to do that the recess dialog does not already do. The product models the geometry — an opening of a given size, depth and position — and a beam pocket is one configuration of that geometry.

This is worth knowing beyond this one feature: several things the trade names separately are one dialog here. An MEP penetration is the same dialog with Shape set to Circle and the thickness taken through the panel. The vocabulary index maps the words you say to the places you set them.

Watch the lesson

The video sets the pocket from The row on AAA039 and shows the panel redrawn. It opens with one plain redraw of the panel before the lesson starts.

Note

This lesson still carries no count of how often real jobs use beam pockets: no trustworthy count has been measured across the sample panels yet.