Tutorial 35: The Insert Family

Everything in this lesson is a small piece of metal cast into the panel that something else attaches to weeks or months later. None of them can be added afterwards, none of them are visible once the building is finished, and every one of them stops a trade dead when it is missing.

Feature

What it is

Standard

In ConstructiVision

Coil insert

A coil-thread insert for secondary framing attachment

Manufacturer handbooks

built today — a Connection Type you define, placed like any embed

Slotted insert / anchor

A slotted insert allowing flexible attachment positioning

Manufacturer handbooks

partly — the insert and its extent, not the travel

Bridging anchor

A cast-in bridging or bracing anchor

TCA Detail Library

built today — it is the Brace Point

Seismic / shear connector

A cast connector resisting in-plane shear or seismic load

ACI 551.2R

built today — a Connection Type; the Type mark is the callout

Bent bar

A bent reinforcing bar for a pour-back connection

TCA

partly — Slab Dowels at the floor closure strip; not at a vertical joint

Most of this family is buildable today — under names you would not search for

There is no button called Insert. That is why it is easy to conclude wrongly that inserts are missing. In ConstructiVision an insert is a Connection Type: you define it once for the project in Edit Embeds, then place it from the Weld Connections row like any other embed. The user manual says so plainly — “Connections may also be used to define and place any other kind of embed.”

Two more of these already have homes: a bracing anchor is a Brace Point (Tutorial 9: Brace Points & Expansion Gaps), and a bent bar into the floor closure strip is a Slab Dowel (Tutorial 34: Parapets, Control Joints & Pour Strips).

What genuinely has no home is narrower than it looks: the slot as a range of adjustment rather than as a solid of that size, and the bent bar at a vertical joint between two panels. Those two steps are marked (planned) where they describe behaviour not in your build.

Note

A browser version covers part of this lesson. Open it here — it lists exactly which steps it does not cover, so you know what to come back to AutoCAD for.

What you will learn

  • The single property that separates an insert from a connection: whether it is threaded for something to be bolted to later, or welded to at construction.

  • How to define an insert once in the project embed catalog and place it on any panel — including a whole line of them at a spacing.

  • Why a slotted insert exists at all, what it says about the trade that uses it, and the one thing about it a box cannot say.

  • Why a bridging anchor is a temporary-works item that lives permanently in the panel — and why it turns out to be a control you already know.

  • What a bent bar does that no embed can, and which half of that job is already modeled.

Before you start

Watch the lesson

Warning

What this recording does and does not demonstrate. It places the bridging anchor of Step 5: one Brace Points row on TP08-12 at 15’-0”, with columns at 6’-0” from the panel edge and 8’-0” beyond that, and the anchor part typed as B-14. The redrawn panel shows both brace points at 6’-0” and 14’-0”, dimensioned along the row. The coil insert, seismic connector and bent bar (Steps 3, 6 and 7) are placed as Connection Types, the way Tutorial 7: Weld Connections shows, and are described here rather than placed again.

Lesson

Step 1 — Insert or connection?

Tutorial 33: Bearing Seats & Embedded Angles separated bearings from connections by load direction. This lesson separates inserts from both, by a different question: what happens to it later?

Later, someone…

So it needs

Weld plate

welds to it

an exposed steel face

Insert

threads a bolt into it

a thread, a depth, and a stated capacity

Bent bar

pours concrete around it

development length, and to be left projecting

An insert is a threaded hole with concrete around it. It carries a rated capacity that comes from the manufacturer, and it is specified by a product designation rather than by dimensions — which is the practical reason it cannot share a row with a weld plate. “3/4-inch coil insert” is a part number’s worth of meaning; “6×6 plate” is a description.

That distinction is real on the job and it stays real on the drawing. What it is not is a reason for two separate features in the software, and this is where a lot of people talk themselves out of using what is there. ConstructiVision draws every embed as a simple 3D box of the size you give it — “since the Fabricator will provide detail drawings for connections” — and identifies it by the name you gave that box. A weld plate is a box whose name happens to describe its size. An insert is a box whose name is a part number. The drawing carries both correctly, because the name is what the fabricator buys from.

Step 2 — Define it once, place it many times

This step is the mechanism behind the three that follow. Do it once and Steps 3, 5 and 6 are the same three clicks with different values.

Define the type

Open Weld Connections and click Edit Embeds at the bottom left. That opens the project’s embed catalog — the Weld Connection Specifications editor. Every new project starts with a seeded catalog of common types, so look before you type; the one you want may already be listed.

On an empty row:

  • Type — the identifier. The manual is exact about what this field does: “Enter a unique Connection identifier. This will be the identifying text printed on the final drawing and included in the Materials List function.” For an insert, this is the product designation — the thing Step 1 said an insert is specified by. Put the part number here and it prints on the elevation and totals by that name in the take-off.

  • Width — along the X-axis. Height — along the Y-axis. Thickness — along the Z-axis. Placed on a face, the Thickness is what the item occupies into the panel from that face, which for an insert is its embedment.

  • Structural ID, Fabricator ID, Description — “not printed in the final drawing, but will be included in the Materials List for cross reference.” Three places to carry the engineer’s mark, the shop’s mark and a plain-language note without cluttering the elevation.

Tip

Sizes are not clamped to the panel. The manual states it directly: “Either the Width, Height, and/or Thickness may be greater than the Panel perimeter for specialized connections that protrude from the Panels.” That is what lets you describe an item that sticks out, rather than only items that sit flush.

The catalog is project-wide. Only the type reference and the placement are stored in each panel; the definitions live with the project, so a change is available to every panel at once. Panels already drawn do not update until they are redrawn — after editing a type, run Batch Utilities → Update Drawings.

Place it

Back on a numbered Weld Connections row: check Enable, pick your type from the drop-down, then position it.

  • Measure From (L / R) and Distance — panel edge to the centre of the item.

  • Elev To (C/Pl or T/Pl) and Left Elev — elevation from finished floor.

  • On Face — Up or Dn, the face it is cast at. With neither checked, Z Offset buries it in the thickness; left at 0 it centres in the panel.

  • Snap To — L, R, T, B to sit flush to an edge instead of dimensioning to it.

  • Rot90 / ToEdge / ToT/B — rotate the item 90°, turn its flat face toward the nearest edge, or toward the top or bottom. Combinable, so any orientation is reachable.

Repeat it

Most inserts arrive as a line, not as one. The Array columns handle that and you do not place them individually:

  • H and/or V, combinable — a row across, a column up, or a grid.

  • Spacing — centre to centre, “usually the same spacing called out on the Structural Plans.”

  • # (quantity) — and a quantity of 0 means “the actual number of plates will be calculated at run time to extend the array across the Panel without extending beyond it.” Type the spacing, leave the count at zero, and the panel fills itself without overhanging.

  • Arrays sequence from whichever edge Measure From names. Sloped horizontal arrays get a string line on the drawing to make setting them out practical, and if the true spacing along the slope differs from the horizontal spacing by more than 1/16” an extra baseline dimension is added.

There is also a keyboard shortcut for the near-miss case, where the next item is a set distance from the last rather than part of a regular array: type + followed by the separation in Distance or Left Elev, and the remaining values are copied down from the row above for you to adjust.

Confirm with OK and redraw.

Step 3 — Coil insert

A coil insert is a coil-thread socket cast flush with the face. Secondary framing bolts to it: canopies, ladders, pipe supports, sign brackets, guardrail posts — the accumulated attachments a finished building carries.

Everything it needs is in Step 2. Define a type whose Type mark is the manufacturer’s designation, whose Width and Height are the socket’s face size, and whose Thickness is its embedment. Place it On Face, dimensioned from the panel edge and from finished floor. For a canopy or a ladder, use a horizontal array at the plan’s spacing.

Then check three things on the redrawn panel, because they are the three the trade downstream depends on:

  1. The designation prints at the item, not a generic mark. That is how the yard knows which box to open.

  2. The dimensions read to the panel datum — edge and finished floor. An insert half an inch off is a bolt hole that does not line up, and nobody discovers it until the bracket arrives.

  3. The Materials List totals it by that designation. Inserts are bought by part number and a shortfall is noticed by part number.

Tip

Inserts are the most commonly forgotten feature on a tilt-up panel, because the trade that needs them is not in the building yet when the panel is cast. If the mechanical, electrical or signage packages are not final at pour time, the inserts that get cast are the ones somebody wrote down. Nothing in the software fixes that — but a named type in the project catalog gives the packages one place to be written down, which is most of the battle.

Step 4 — Slotted insert (partly planned)

A slotted insert is the same idea with tolerance built in: the bolt can move along the slot. It exists because two things that both have tolerance have to meet, and somewhere in the assembly one of them has to give.

That makes it dimensionally different from every other feature in this lesson. A coil insert is at a point. A slotted insert is at a point plus a range, and the drawing has to carry the range, because that range is the whole reason it was chosen.

Most of that is expressible now, and it is worth being precise about which part is not:

  • The extent is expressible. Define the type with its Width set to the slot length. The box drawn on the panel is then as long as the slot is, and Rot90 stands it vertical when the travel runs up the panel rather than across it.

  • The position is right. Distance is measured to the centre of the item, so a slotted insert is dimensioned to the slot centre — which is the convention the detail expects.

  • It reports separately. Give it its own Type mark and the Materials List totals it apart from fixed inserts. They are different parts at different prices, and that is enough to keep them apart in the take-off.

What has no home is the slot as travel. ConstructiVision draws “simple 3D boxes to indicate the overall size, location, and placement” — a solid. Nothing in the model distinguishes a six-inch-long insert from an insert with six inches of adjustment, so the range is present as a shape but not as a property: it does not appear as a slot-length call-out in its own right, and nothing downstream can reason about where the bolt is allowed to end up.

Intended behaviour: the slot length and orientation carried as properties of the row rather than inferred from the box, dimensioned as a range with the length called out on the drawing. Until then, put the slot length in the Type mark — SL-6 reads as six inches of slot to anyone who has the schedule, and the schedule is where the Description field carries the rest.

Step 5 — Bridging anchor

A bridging anchor is cast into the panel to take a temporary brace — the pipe braces that hold panels upright between construction and the roof diaphragm going on.

It is the same situation as the construction seat in Tutorial 33: Bearing Seats & Embedded Angles: temporary in purpose, permanent in the panel. Two consequences follow, and the second is the one that gets missed:

  1. It has to be cast in, so it is on the drawing and in the take-off.

  2. Its position is set by the bracing plan, not by the architecture. It has to reach a brace at a workable angle and land on a slab that can take the reaction. That is a construction decision made before the panel is cast, which is unusual — most construction decisions can wait.

That second point is exactly why ConstructiVision gives it its own dialog rather than folding it into the embeds: the bracing anchor is the Brace Point (Tutorial 9: Brace Points & Expansion Gaps). It is not a separate item that has to be kept in agreement with the brace layout — it is the brace layout, entered once.

Open Brace Points. Each row is a brace elevation with up to six columns across it. Two fields are the ones this step is about:

  • Type — the brace anchor’s manufacturer part number or description, free text.

  • Ext — the brace extension part, where a tall panel needs one.

The Materials List counts brace points and extensions segregated by what you type in those two fields; leave Type blank and they are counted instead by the size required for the panel thickness. So the part number you specify is the part number that is totalled.

The temporary-works distinction is handled by where it lands rather than by a flag: brace points and braces are their own categories in the take-off, separate from embeds, and they are drawn with their own circular marker rather than as a box. A reader of the panel book cannot mistake one for a permanent connection.

Note

Brace count, capacity and position on a real job come from the brace engineer’s design. ConstructiVision draws and counts the layout you enter; it does not determine it.

If your project means bridging in the joist-bridging sense rather than panel bracing, that is a plain embed and Step 2 places it — a defined type at a point, with the bridging designation as its Type mark.

Step 6 — Seismic / shear connector

A shear connector resists load in the plane of the panel — the panel trying to slide or rack relative to what it is connected to. In a seismic region that load case governs, and the connector is sized for it.

It is a connection, and it will physically look like a weld plate. The thing that makes it its own item is not its geometry but that the drawing has to say what it is for. A fabricator who sees a plate and a shear connector at the same size will treat them the same. The crew who weld the shear connection with the wrong weld, or leave it for later, have broken the load path.

That is a naming problem, and naming is precisely what the embed catalog does. Define the connector as its own Type even where an existing plate has identical dimensions:

  • Type — SC1, SEIS-2, or whatever the structural drawings call it. This “will be the identifying text printed on the final drawing and included in the Materials List function” — so the callout appears at the connector on the elevation, and the take-off counts shear connectors separately from plates of the same size.

  • Structural ID — the engineer’s own mark. Not printed, but carried into the Materials List for cross reference, which is how a reviewer ties the count back to the structural drawings.

  • Description — the plain sentence a fabricator reads when the mark alone is not enough.

Same geometry, different callout, and the callout is the point. Two types with identical Width, Height and Thickness are not redundant here; they are the whole feature.

Recorded, not certified

ConstructiVision records the connector type, position and designation you enter and carries them to the drawing and the schedules. It does not calculate seismic demand, size the connector, or verify the load path. Those come from the structural engineer, and this feature exists so their decision survives the trip to the fabricator.

Step 7 — Bent bar (partly planned)

A bent bar is reinforcing steel, bent, cast into the panel with one leg projecting out — so that when the closure strip (Tutorial 34: Parapets, Control Joints & Pour Strips) is placed later, there is steel crossing the joint to tie the two pours together.

It is the only item in this lesson that is not attached to but cast around, and it is the only one that sticks out of the panel while the panel is being handled. That second fact has consequences in the yard: projecting bars catch on things, and they have to be accounted for in stacking and transport.

Which of those joints you mean decides whether it is built today.

The horizontal case — this is the Slab Dowel

Where the closure strip is between the panel and the floor slab, the bent bar already has a control, and it is not called a bent bar. The manual: “Slab Dowels are J-shaped lengths of rebar embedded in the Panel wall that protrude from below Finished Floor and extend into the slab. They are used to anchor the Panel to the slab and/or other floors after the closure strip is poured.” J-shaped, projecting, into the strip — the same object this step describes.

Open Slab Dowels. Six rows. Per row:

  • Elevation — finished floor to the centre of the row. It is not restricted to the base; the row can sit anywhere between panel bottom and panel top, which is what “and/or other floors” means.

  • Length — “the length that the Slab Dowels extend from the near face of the Panel (into the closure strip).” This is the projection, and the closure detail is what decides it.

  • Maximum Spacing and Inset — the run across the panel. Actual spacing is adjusted at draw time to hold the inset.

  • Trim / Offset / Extend from Top / Extend from Bottom — what the row does where it crosses an opening. This is the part that is genuinely tedious by hand and it is done for you.

The drawing gets the length, spacing and inset as text along the row, and an elevation marker to the centre of the row. Tutorial 34: Parapets, Control Joints & Pour Strips is the follow-along for this one, taken from the closure-strip side.

The vertical case — (planned)

Where the strip is between two panels — a corner, a column, or a joint the panel layout could not close — the bar has to project from the panel edge, not the face, and no control does that. The slab-dowel row will not stand in for it: it anchors one panel down to the floor, not two panels to each other across a joint.

Two further gaps are worth knowing whichever joint you are detailing:

  • There is no bar size and no bend geometry. A slab-dowel row records elevation, length, spacing and inset. The bar itself — its size, its bend, its development length — is not a field, and no rebar quantity appears in the Materials List. Bar size belongs on the drawing as a note taken from the reinforcing schedule.

  • Nothing derives the bars from the strip. They are entered panel by panel from the closure detail. A bent bar that does not match its pour strip is worse than no bent bar, because it looks correct.

Intended behaviour: an edge-projecting bar row taking bar size, bend geometry, projection length and spacing, drawn projecting from the panel edge in both elevation and plan, and — critically — generated from the closure strip on the adjacent joint rather than entered independently, so the two panels that form the joint cannot disagree about it.

As a stopgap for a vertical joint, a protruding embed type snapped to the edge (Step 2, and the oversize note there) will at least put a marked, counted item on the drawing at each bar position, with a V array to repeat it up the edge. That records the bar’s presence and its name. It is not a bar: it is a box, it carries no bend, and it lands in the take-off as an embed. Treat it the way Tutorial 33: Bearing Seats & Embedded Angles treats an embedded angle — better than leaving it off, and dimension the rest by hand.

Check your result

You should now be able to:

  • Separate an insert from a connection by what happens to it later, not by what it looks like.

  • Say why an insert is specified by product designation while a weld plate is specified by size — and say which single field in ConstructiVision carries that designation to the drawing and to the take-off.

  • Define a new embed type in Edit Embeds and place it on a panel, naming which of Width, Height and Thickness is the embedment when the item is placed on a face.

  • Fill a panel with a line of inserts at the plan spacing without counting them — and say what a quantity of 0 does.

  • Explain why a slotted insert has to carry a range and not just a position, say how much of that range is expressible today, and name the part that is not.

  • Say which dialog places a bracing anchor, and why the anchor and the brace layout cannot drift apart.

  • Say which two brace-point fields the Materials List totals by.

  • Explain why a shear connector needs its own callout even when its geometry matches a plain connection, and name the field that makes that callout print.

  • Say which half of the bent-bar job is already modeled, what it is called, and which joint it does not cover.

Where next