General
When you create a beam with a general section, the beam icon on your model is displayed as a rectangle, where the length, width and orientation angle of the rectangular beam section is calculated from the moments of inertia.
For General beam section types, you must define values for the following on the Beam Section Definition dialog box:
• Area
• J
Select units for area, moments of inertia, shear factors and shear centers and torsion stiffness parameters or use the default units.
You can optionally perform the following tasks:
• Use the Stress Grid option to enter Y and Z offset values for each stress recovery point. You must specify stress grid values in order to view results for beam stress recovery points for general beam sections.
• Use the Review button to display the section properties of a beam section.
The default graphic in wireframe for a general beam section type is illustrated below for native mode. Note that this graphic appears regardless of the stress recovery point locations that you define using the Stress Grid. That is, the software does not display a graphic with the entered locations when you define your results window. In FEM mode, the software uses the first four points that you define for the section.
