AutoCAD Plant 3D Structural Editing – “Cut Member Edges”

The little icon that probably does not get used very often is actually a very nice tool for automatically cutting back members to include a gap if required.  See the image below of the structural members.  They were placed on a grid on center, which will require some clean up.  The grid has been turned off for clarity.

We need to trim the members back and to do this quickly, we will use this tool as seen in the next image.

So as the instructions indicate, this tool will cut multiple members back to the edge of a member that is placed on endpoints of the adjacent members.  After selecting the command, it will prompt you to enter in a “gap”, which can be just zero or can be a gap that you specify.  This will leave a gap between the end of the member and the face of the cutting member.

Select the members you wish to cut back.  In the example below, I just used a crossing window to select them all at once.

After selecting the members you need to cut back, hit ENTER and see the work done for you!  This is much better than doing one at a time.

Experiment with this tool to see how you can add gaps in the cut and look for circumstances that it does not work for, because there are some of those too.