Column Design and Material Selection Software

[TWJ]

I'm working on a weekend "Honey DO" project and need some help finding a software pkg to help me complete the design. It's been a number of years (17 or 18) since I've done the calcs, but understand the principles. I've used SuperBeam to determine the steel beam sizes and type, but need an equivalent program to determine column size and type based on the reactions from Superbeam. Anyone know of a shareware or demo program that would help me determine column type and size.

 

[IJR]

TWJ

Cause I am not in States I will have to guess that "HONEY DO" may mean you do it yourself.

Anyway, since you know the basics I think you wont have trouble doing that. Get some demo CD from

http://www.csiberkeley.com.

It might take time for you to understand modelling, so why dont you buy cheap specific purpose software from

http://www.inducta.com

(Australian) or get a copy of the famous PCAcol software which does column design.

Do you want to specify a problem, so that friends here can suggest a free download, may be offer a spreadsheet even.

There are companies like enercalc which offer many demos.

bottom line: do some google search for companies I have mentioned, get some demos, check out what you like and go on honeying.

Good luck

IJR

 

[ishvaaag]

If you don't have done your honey do there are posted worksheets for Mathcad that are freely downloadable for free that can check steel columns once their solicitations are known. You will need Mathcad, anyway...but may be they send also a operative demo.