Modeling Custom Shapes in

STAAD.Pro 2007

By

RAM/STAAD Solution Center

6 February 2008
STAAD.Pro section database contains sections
from seventeen different countries. For the U.S.,
design codes, in addition to the AISC section
steel profiles, American Steel Joist, cold formed
steel, timber and aluminum databases are also
provided with STAAD.Pro. If a new section
profile is introduced in the market or a very old
AISC section is missing in the section database,
the user has the power to modify the existing
section profile tables by using the Tools-
>Modify Section Database menu command.
In some instances the user may have an odd
section profile that is not contained in the
standard section database. These types of
sections can be modeled using the General
Section feature in STAAD.Pro. A General
Section can be defined by clicking on the Tools-
>Create User Table menu command. The
Create User Provided Table dialog box will
appear. Using this dialog box, the user may
create a table with the “General” section type as
shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The General Section Table 1 contains a section
with the name UPT
For example, let us assume that the user wanted
to create a custom “L” shaped section in
STAAD.Pro. The user would have to click on
the Add New Property button in the Create User
Provided Table dialog box and as a result the
General dialog box will appear in the
STAAD.Pro interface as shown in Figure 2.
The user may type in the section properties or
may request STAAD.Pro to calculate the section
properties if he/she had the profile points ready.
Unfortunately, profile points from a dxf file
cannot be imported into this dialog box. One
may import the points into STAAD.Section
wizard from a dxf file and then transfer those
points to the profile table shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: L section Profile Points
The engineer may type in the profile points in the
profile point table shown in Figure 2.
Let us type the following points in the section
profile table:
Table 1: Section Profile Points
Z (in) Y (in)
1 0 0
2 0 10
3 1 10
4 1 3
5 4 3
6 4 0
After the Compute Section Properties button is
clicked, STAAD.Pro will calculate all the section
properties as shown in Figure 2.
Once the structural geometry is created in
STAAD.Pro, the engineer could assign the
custom property to the respective members by
clicking on the User Table button located in the
General -> Property control tab item data area
shown in Figure 3. The User Property Table
dialog box will appear with the custom sections
listed in the table. The engineer has to select the
custom section and assign it to the members in
his/her STAAD.Pro model.
 stress diagram for the L-sections as illustrated in
Figure 6.

Figure 3: The User Table button in the Properties Dialog Figure 6: Combined Axial and Bending Stress Diagrams
box

Figure 4: The User Property Table

STAAD.Pro’s 3D rendered mode will be able to

render the L-Shapes as shown in Figure 5 using
the profile points provided by the user.

Figure 5: L Sections are seen in 3D-Rendered Mode in

STAAD.Pro

The engineer will be able to see all the analytical

results in the post-processing mode. He/She will
be able to see a combined axial and bending