The H-Factor

Setting a hanger up to hang from bottom of steel is fairly straightforward. What is not straightforward, however, is what happens next.

Setting it up simply consists of checking the Bottom option in the Hang From area. This turns on the Steel Depth option where you can enter that value.

Hangers using a Steel Depth value are colored differently in the drawing. In the drawing below, the hanger on the left is hanging from Bottom of steel. The one on the right is not:

Ok, so say a week goes by and you don't remember the steel depth stored in the hanger. To check it, you need to look at the XDATA of the hanger since this depth is not stored as an attribute. To check the XDATA, pick the Express pull down menu. then pick Tools->List Object Xdata

Then pick the hanger text and press enter. This will write the Xdata to the text screen. If you cannot see the lines below, press (F2) to display the text screen:

The Code 1010 field has the left (minus 1 foot) in it. This is the Steel Depth.

Now say you have a bunch if different steel depths and want to use the same five or six lengths over and over again. What I would do is draw a pipe off to the side and insert a hanger for each depth. I would label them for easy reference and then copy them as needed to the pipes they fit: