Advance Steel provides an element that helps the user to create any compound profile.
It is called "Generic compound beam" and can be found in the "Compound beam" category:
It shares the same properties with any compound/welded profile, but the user has the added ability to set what profiles and how many it contains and how they are arranged. You can also save any profiles created and reuse them in other models.
Take for example the following profile, made of Flat sections, and model them using the Generic compound beam.
Insert in a model the Generic compound beam element.
Access the "Sections" tab.
The controls that are used to create custom compound beams are on this tab. You can add or remove beams, change their section class / section and the position relative to the compound system axis with a set of 2D controls.
Before you start editing the current compound, you should delete the present beam indexes (2-6) using the "Remove the current section" command.
Set the section class to "Flat" (check "All section types" first) and choose FL280X10.
The profile is added centered with respect to the compound reference line, in a vertical orientation. You need to rotate it 90 degrees and eventually offset it (on Y). For this example, do not offset it.
Add a new beam and choose the FL275x10 section. While positioning it on a center offset, set the distances for X to 105 and for Y to -142.5. Add another FL275x10 beam with X = 105 and Y = 142.50.
The last beam will be a FL 200X10. Also rotate and center it, and then apply an offset of -205 mm on Y.
After the profile is created, you can save it on the "Section" tab.
The created compound profile is saved in the database: AstorProfiles2010.mdb, table: CP_ALUSystems.
