Quick Tip - Tapered Complex Profile Beams

[Gerry Leonor]

For posterity's sake.

We were looking for a way to model tapered steel rafters using imported complex profiles for one of our warehouse projects:

this was achieved using the following steps:

- create a (duplicate) complex profile with the reference point at the top of the beam & activate the Height Stretch modifier:

the reason why we put the reference point at the top is to ensure that the taper only occurs on one face of the steel beam.

 - in the Beam settings, create multiple segments of one beam -- all of it using the same tapered complex profile. For the ends that require the taper, activate the "Tapered Size" option, & input the height dimension at either the Start or the End nodes. ensure you've got the correct segment lengths depending on the Structural engineer's requirements.

if all goes well, you'll have the correct tapers modelled:

FYI, this also works for columns. Pretty much the same process.

[Lingwisyer]

Can be done in AC23 onwards.

[dcerezo]

 I just tried this and for some reason the area where I type in the tapered dimensions is grayed out. It works for rectangular sections, but not custom profiles. Any idea why that is?

 

 

[Gerry Leonor]

did you make a duplicate of that steel profile & enable the Height Stretch in the Profile Manager?

[Lingwisyer]

Make sure you do not include the flange in the stretch region, else it will change dimensions when you taper...

[dcerezo]

No I didn't. This is just a basic Steel Profile that I imported from the default list in ArchiCAD.

[Barry Kelly]

As Gerry said, make sure the height stretch is active for that profile.

And as Ling said, set the height stretch limits to just part of the web - do not include the top and bottom flanges of the beam profile.

That way the web will stretch and the flange will move.

Barry.