Member Rotation Around Plane

If members aligned in space meet in a node, the local x- or y-axes of the members do not lie in one plane, since the local z-axes are aligned in the plane of gravity.

As shown in Figure 01, this can easily be overlooked in the rendering for small inclinations.

Unaligned Members

However, this can be a problem for the design in RF-/JOINTS, for example, because the members do not lie in a connection plane (see Figure 02).

Error Message in RF-/JOINTS

Therefore, the design is not possible. It is, therefore, necessary to rotate the member into the connection plane. Since manual calculation of the member rotation would be too time-consuming, RFEM and RSTAB offer the option to rotate a member automatically into a desired plane. To do this, select the "Member rotation via help node" function and select a node that is located in the desired plane and not on the member to be rotated (see Figure 03).