Manufacturer Basics

One problem that seems to pop up every so often involves Manufacturer Basics.

The idea behind Manufacturer Basics is straightforward--these are your default settings that form the starting point for all new projects. You can specify things like steel end cuts, normal loading, etc. New projects should, in theory, use these settings as the "parent" of the Job Basics.

Unfortunately, this "Parent - Child" relationship is only used if you create new truss projects within the Design program (File, New Job). If you simply open an existing folder in Design (since a Job is equivalent to a folder), Design will create a new Job Basics file (job.var) if one does not exist. Most of the time, jobs/folders are already existing when the design process is ready to be started.

So this nice step of creating Job Basics based on Manufacturer Basics rarely occurs. Instead, Design uses a recent job.var file to create the new one--which can carry over loading and other settings from one project to the next. There's no telling who's the "Parent" of your "Child". I'm pretty sure there's some bad jokes there, just waiting to be made.

Worse yet, sometimes things like fastener settings can become corrupted or incorrect. Once that happens in one project, it can spread to all subsequent projects. Problems like that can be tedious to fix.

The best solution? Always check your Job Basics before designing (or importing) the first truss.