Organize the shape catalog view

2021

Tekla Structures

You can organize the shape catalog view in the Shape catalog dialog box to suit your needs and ways of working. For example, you can hide certain property columns, or change the order of the property columns. You can also filter shapes and mark them with stars and tags.

Some of these methods work the same way also in the Select shape dialog box: showing and hiding property columns, changing the order of the columns, filtering, and starring. The Select shape dialog box opens when you click the ... button next to the Shape box in the item properties, or in a component dialog box, to select a shape.

The changes you make to the dialog box layout are automatically saved to the shape_catalog.settings.UI file in the ..\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Trimble\Tekla Structures\<version>\Catalogs\ folder. Tekla Structures will use the saved layout next time you open the dialog box.

Show or hide the catalog ribbon

If needed, you can show or hide the ribbon in the Shape catalog dialog box and in the Select shape dialog box.

By default, the ribbon is shown in the Shape catalog dialog box, but hidden in the Select shape dialog box.

To show the ribbon, click the down arrow at the right end of the (Home) ribbon title bar.
To hide the ribbon, click the up arrow at the right end of the (Home) ribbon title bar.

Work with property columns in the catalog view

You can organize the shape catalog view in the Shape catalog dialog box and in the Select shape dialog box by showing and hiding the property columns, and by changing the order, sort order, and width of the columns.

The Star column is always visible and you cannot hide it.


To	Do this
Show or hide a property column	Click Show columns to open a list of the available property columns. A check mark in front of a column name indicates that the column is visible. To show a column, click the column name to add a check mark in front of the column name. To hide a column, click the column name to remove the check mark.
Change the order of the property columns	Drag a column header to a new location.
Change the sort order of a property column	Click the column header. The arrow symbol next to the column header indicates if the sort order is ascending or descending . To sort values by two properties and in two columns: Sort by one column. Hold down Shift and then sort by the other column.
Resize a property column	Drag the edge between this and the following column header. For example: You can also click Fit columns to adjust the widths of the visible columns so that the longest value in each column is shown.

Filter shapes

You can filter shapes in both the Shape catalog dialog box and the Select shape dialog box. You can use filtering together with the other methods, such as sorting, to narrow down the number of shapes shown in the shape catalog view.

On the File menu, click Catalogs > Shape catalog to open the Shape catalog dialog box.

Alternatively, you can use the Select shape dialog box.
In the Filter box, type the search term or filtering criteria.
Select a group or sub-group.

Tekla Structures shows the matching shapes in the selected group.

Add stars to shapes

You can mark important or preferred shapes with stars, so that you can easily find these shapes later. The shapes that are marked with stars appear in the Starred group in the shape catalog. Starring is user-specific, so it is only visible to you.

The starring settings are stored in the shape_catalog.settings.user.<username> file in the current model folder.

On the File menu, click Catalogs > Shape catalog to open the Shape catalog dialog box.

Alternatively, you can use the Select shape dialog box.
Browse or search for the shapes that you want to mark with stars.
In the list of shapes, click the white star symbol in the Star column for each shape that you want to add to the Starred group.

By default, the Star column is the first column and the star symbol is at the beginning of each shape row.

The star symbol turns yellow and the shape is added to the Starred group.
To remove the starring from a shape, click the yellow star symbol on the shape row.

The star symbol turns white again and the shape is removed from the Starred group.

Add tags to shapes

In the Shape catalog dialog box, you can add tags to shapes. Use tags to add keywords or other metadata to the shapes.

Tags are model-specific and saved to the ShapeCatalog.Groups.User.<username>.xml file in the current model folder.

On the File menu, click Catalogs > Shape catalog to open the Shape catalog dialog box.
Select the shapes that you want to tag.
Type the tag in the Tags box at the bottom-right corner of the Shape catalog dialog box, and then press Enter.

To add several tags to a shape, type the next tag in the next tag box and press Enter.

Each group of tagged shapes appears with the symbol under Tags in the list of groups.
To remove a tag from a shape, select the shape and click the X symbol after the tag name in the Tags section in the property area.
To delete a tag completely, select the tagged group, select all the shapes in the group, and then click the X symbol after the tag name in the Tags section in the property area.
Click Save to save the changes to the shape catalog.