The barrel connection consists of a steel rod, cross drilled and tapped for a threaded rod. The threaded rod ends in the female beam with a plate washer and nut. There are 2 orientations available, parallel to the male beam, and perpendicular to the female.
You can control barrel diameter, length and orientation along with rod diameter and plate dimensions in the OPM. Vertical barrel orientation is only available when the rod is parallel to the male beam. The threaded rod can be extended if desired, for connecting an exterior bracket back to conventional framing as an example. Excel export of hardware is supported, see the HARDWARE explanation on the main page.
Insertion
- Insertion is the default behavior for a T connection, select a male beam, then female. If you are trying to use the female orientation the beam picks are a little non-intuitive, remember the male (first beam picked) gets the barrel.
- The default orientation is parallel to the male, with the barrel horizontal. 1/16" tolerance is added to all holes.
Mods
As with all TSLs that have properties you can easily change the default values used during insertion. You can also adjust the amount of extra rod figured for each end.
The barrel connector is tough to beat for hidden tension capacity, this is a view of the two orientations in ADTs conceptual mode with transparency on. The female orientation applies not only to a top chord to tie as above, but also to connect the strut of an exterior bracket back to the wall plate/post, and conventional framing beyond.
The meaning of "Offset across face" and "End Distance" properties are different for each orientation. The extension is measured from where the rod exits the female beam. With no extension the rod automatically defaults to a lenght which gives it 1/4" extra past the nut & barrel
Most properties are defined with three parameters that are listed in parenthesese after the name, here dNotchDepth is the name of the property. The first parameter ( 8 ) is an index used internally by the TSL compiler, it must be unique for each property in the script. The second entry is the default value ( U(2) ), and the string at the end is the description that appears in the OPM. dNotchDepth will be equal to 2" on first insertion ( U is defined at the begining of the script to mean inches), alter this entry to customize the default notch depth.
Properties which are limited to a discrete set of values are defined as dRodDiam is here--- the rod can only take one of the values listed for dArRodDiam in the previous line. Add a number to the list to have another rod diameter available, or change the index occuring after the description to specify the default value ( the index is zero based). If no index is listed after the description. the first item in the list will be the default ( index = 0 ) .
Extra length is added to both ends of the threded rod, change the definition of dExtraRod to alter the amount added.
