Modify or Create an I Beam Structural Member

[gangotti]

My building uses W21x48 I-beams as our primary attachment points for the rigging on our building.  I am unable to find it anywhere in the structural member catalog.  can someone point me to or provide me instructions on how to create this or modify an existing beam to the correct dimension?  I have all the engineering data (Plastic Modulus, Torsional Constant, and Elastic Properties) so I would need to know how to update that as well.  Thanks 

[Jonathan Pickup]

there is a text file in the Vectorworks folder that has all the structural shapes:

Vectorworks > Plug-ins > Common > Data > StructShape_WFlange-Inch.txt

 

be careful editing this, but you can add your new sizes to the text file, 

[gangotti]

Thanks Jonathan, I have figured out what most of the numbers mean, but I am not sure about the last 2 sets from what I see it looks like the numbers are (from Left to Right):

Depth of Beam, Flange Width, Web Thickness, Flange Thickness, ???, ???  

 

Can you fill in blanks for me?

[Pat Stanford]

The Beam Height in this image is also known as as the Beam Depth.

 

Your steel supplier should be able to provide you with a table of all this information for the beams your are specifying.

 

[gangotti]

Pat, thanks for that, there, the last 2 values in the txt file are not making sense.  The 5th value from the right is a number that does not exist in any Steel construction manyal and he 6th number from the left seems to be the same as the beam width.   for example:

 

W36 x 135    35.550    11.950     0.600      0.790       0.750       11.950

 

In this example it looks like the first value, 35.550 is the Beam Height. the second value, 11.950 id the Beam Width. The third value, 0.600 is the Web Thickness, the fourth value, 0.790 is the Flange Thickness.  The fifth value 0.750, I cannot find anywhere.  The final value, 11.950 is apparently the Beam Width again?   

 

[Pat Stanford]

I don't know what the last two values are either.

 

Based on reviewing the data for the Wide Flange object from the Detailing Palette which I think uses the same source for the original data file, the 0.75 is probably the filet radius on the connection between the Web and the Flange and the last value would be the width of the bottom flange if you were using a beam with different flange widths.

 

 

 

 

@JuanPI don't know who else to ask. Can you please get someone to point us to the column definitions for the StructShape_WFlange-Inch.txt file.

 

Actually it would be best if the column definitions for every StrucShape file and all of the structural shapes in the Detailing palette were listed somewhere in the documentation.

[ashot]

in my opinion,

Pat is right, I agree, the last two values: Fillet Radius and Bottom Flange thickness

[Pat Stanford]

And Ashot is a structural engineer with a lot of experience in steel.  👍

[Jonathan Pickup]

43 minutes ago, Pat Stanford said:

Actually it would be best if the column definitions for every StrucShape file and all of the structural shapes in the Detailing palette were listed somewhere in the documentation.

Why not include this information in the top line of the .xml file.  (Interiorcad used to do this)

[Pat Stanford]

I think because it is not an XML It is a TXT and the code is not designed to handle "comments".

[gangotti]

Thanks everyone for all the help.  Now I can cross that issue off my list!