BEAMs VS BARs

[bwshockley]

Does HyperSizer import PBEAM elements?  OR will it only import PBAR elements?

[Phil]

Currently, HyperSizer only imports CBAR and CROD 1-D elements.  Having CBEAM elements will not cause an error, however, HyperSizer will ignore these elements on import.

Phil

[bwshockley]

Phil, out of curiosity, could you explain why that is?  We tend to use CBEAM elements, we can covert them to CBAR, as we recently did for import.  So, it's not a huge deal for us, but we were just wondering.

Thanks,
Ben

[dflo]

I am also curious to see why this is. I typically use CBEAMs in my models, and it takes some effort to convert them all to CBAR elements.

[Phil]

There were a couple of reasons that we didnt support CBEAMS. 

One is that we don't support non-prismatic beams which can be modeled using CBEAMS. 

A bigger reason is that in the past  we haven't calculated the warping factor or shear center of beams which are really necessary on the PBEAM card to get the proper behavior of the beams.  Sometime later this summer, we will have that information available and at that time, we can come back and re-visit support for CBEAMs.