222 Component Distance

Component and container dimensions and distances are critical for coordinating building components and ensuring that each component fits correctly in its place in a construction. Well-coordinated products allow designers to select items which fit together with the structure and other components to accepted tolerances.

By using this rule, you can detect different types of operability requirements as well as maintenance and safety requirements in your design. You can ensure the ability to keep a piece of equipment, a system or a whole industrial installation in a safe and reliable functioning condition, according to pre-defined requirements. This is the basis for reliability, supportability and maintainability.

Typical use cases for this rule are various types of fire and electrical safety checking. You can also check if there are required number of target components within the required distance or distance range.

The Component Distance rule can, for example, be used to check that the distance between water taps and electrical outlet is more than 0.5m, or that there are at least two spaces using water (bathroom, kitchen) next to a water pipe shaft, or that you have enough maintenance space in front of a ventilation machine.

This rule calculates the distances between the geometry of components and containers or their offset base area. The distance calculations can be carried out in different ways depending on the requirements and purpose of the test. For example, there are measurement methods that measure the distance between the overlapped area of the selected start and end target, and measurement methods that measure the distance between the start and end target independently of the overlapped areas.

In the Parameters view, you can define the source component and target components and select the distance type and checking mode for required distances. Please note that the Parameters view for this rule has been updated in Solibri v24.9.0 and looks slightly different in older versions.

Start and End Targets

Here, you can specify the components or containers you want to evaluate. The "start target" refers to the component or container for which the minimum or maximum distances, along with the selected calculation method, will determine whether it passes or fails.

Distance Type

The Checked Distance to End Target drop-down menu has eight distance calculation methods to select from:

• Shortest 3D distance: This option calculates the shortest distance between two components in 3D, e.g. two components (such as the distance between a stove and a smoke detector) facing each other and their distance in 3D as shown in the image below:

  

• Vertical: Directly Above: This option calculates the vertical distance between two components, where the distance is calculated upwards from the start target to the end target, e.g. two components existing (such as a ventilator must be located above the stove) as shown in the image below:

  

  For Component Surfaces, the following options are available:

  • Highest Point to Lowest Point

  • Lowest Point to Highest Point

  • Highest Point to Highest Point

  • Lowest Point to Lowest Point

• Vertical: Directly Below: This option calculates the vertical distance between two components, where the distance is calculated downwards from the start target to the end target, e.g. two components (such as a window requires a heater below it) as shown in the image below:

  

  For Component Surfaces, the following options are available:

  • Highest Point to Lowest Point

  • Lowest Point to Highest Point

  • Highest Point to Highest Point

  • Lowest Point to Lowest Point

• Vertial: Above within Offset Footprint: This option calculates the distance above the start target that is extended horizontally by the Footprint Offset value. It checks that the distance to the component above is large enough, even if the start target moves.

  

  For Component Surfaces, the following options are available:

  • Highest Point to Lowest Point

  • Lowest Point to Highest Point

  • Highest Point to Highest Point

  • Lowest Point to Lowest Point

  Horizontal Footprint Offset: Specify the amount by which the footprint of the start target is enlarged.

• Vertical: Below within Offset Footprint: This option calculates the distance below the start target but can be extended using the footprint offset value, essentially building in a tolerance area around the start target. It checks that end targets are either within or outside of this defined volume allowing for either a tolerance value or the start moves.

  

  For Component Surfaces, the following options are available:

  • Highest Point to Lowest Point

  • Lowest Point to Highest Point

  • Highest Point to Highest Point

  • Lowest Point to Lowest Point

  Horizontal Footprint Offset: Specify the amount by which the footprint of the start target is enlarged.

• Horizontal: Alongside: This option calculates the distance between two components, when the components exist alongside each other, e.g. the distance between a window and wall component or the distance between a toilet seat and wash basin component.

  

• Horizontal: Between Footprints: This option calculates the 2D distance between two component, projecting their geometry to create a outline in 2D from which to measure the distance.

  

• Horizontal: Facing Within: This is used to find out situations where unwanted components are in the area that is calculated by protruding footprint segments of start target with the given distance. A typical use case is to avoid specific components next to one another, for example electric sockets next to a shaft whose walls shouldn't have holes.

  

Checking Mode

There are three checking modes for this rule: Maximum Distance, Minimum Distance and Range:

• Maximum Distance: The number of end targets (defined in the Maximum Number value) must exist within the specified distance in conjunction with the Distance Calculation method to the start target

  

• Minimum Distance: No end targets are to exist within the specified distance in conjunction with the Distance Calculation method.

  

• Range: The number of end targets (defined in the Minimum Number value) must exist within the specified range distance in conjunction with the Distance Calculation method to the start target

  

• Maximum Distance: Define the maximum distance between components.

• Minimum Distance: Define the minimum distance between components.

• Minimum Number: You can define the minimum number of end targets required.

  Important

  This is only activated for maximum distance between start and end targets. With the minimum value, this acts as an exclusion zone and as such the value is irrelevant. Note that the default value for this maximum number is set to 2. Please adjust this to the number of end targets that are required within this defined distance calculation.

• Use Door Swing in Distance Calculation: When selected, the distance from/to a door is measured from the door swing footprint

Space or Space Group Containment

With these parameter settings, you can either ignore the space or space group or limit the checking to a space or space group. A space group is a large space which consists of many smaller spaces, for example apartments.

You can select from the following options:

• Ignore Space or Space Group: The rule takes the model as a the whole model (spaces or space groups are ignored).

• Space: This measures the distance between components within the same space as the start target. Space groups like apartments are ignored.

• Space Group: This measures the distance between the components with the same space group of the start target.

  • Space Group Type: If you select the Space Group method, you can list the names for the Space Group Types you want to use for limiting.

    Important

    This requires that the Space Group classification is configured correctly for the project. The list of values will then display the space groups in your classification.

This rule creates an issue, if:

Severity Parameters: You can set certain components to always critical or moderate issues in the Severity Parameters view. This allows you to see the if those specific components cause an issue and need special attention.

In this example we have water tap as a start target, and we want to check the safety requirement for electrical outlet distance 0.5m. To avoid the unnecessary issues, you can use spaces to limit the checking area, so the electrical outlet on the other side of wall will not give unnecessary issues.

This type of ruleset has multiple levels, where the first level works as a parent. The components of the following sub-rule are checked based on the results of those self-configuring parent rule.

When the parent rule has two filters, the rule checks those components that are defined in the start and end target component filters. In rule #222, components of start target filter can be any non-container type of components. These components are deliver as output to sub rule. If the sub level rule is also #222 it will accept only non-container type of components as input to start target filter. In this type of ruleset, it is important to understand the output delivered to sub level rule. Depending on the rules, the required input for child rule component filter has to match  with the parent output.

Essentially, where a rule templates contain two filters the outcome of the rule if passed to another rule template that has two filters will only deliver the results (passed or failed) to the start target component of the sub-rule. The target or Component 2 will need to be configured manually.

As an example, a parent rule may define both the start and end target, or Component 1 and Component 2. For the sub-rule checking a value of any for the start target or Component 1 will check the elements in line with the sub-rule options. But the end target or Component 2 if set to any will ignore the conditions of the sub-rule settings and check the whole model.

Components of the sub level are set according to sub rule options:

Typical use cases for this rule are: