I was thrilled you folks have decided to add steel beams as a material. I am a wood technologist and a professional engineer, asnd I will gladly say I appreciate the steel options because I often would analyse a steel beam as an LVL beam and then do a quick "back of the envelope" conversion to steel. I kn ow steel is a compeating material, but wood construction often uses W8 abd W10 beams in residential construction.
I am playing with the steel options anasysing (4) W18x60 bridge stringers that span unequal spans, approx. 22' and 34' clear span. The bracing on these two spans needs to be at all three supports and possibly at 1/4 span locations. I do likethe fact that you givean option for continuous bracing and bracing at the support points. Unfortunately bracing at even intervals is pretty unrealistic for real world problems. Being able to define each braced location would be ideal. It is kind of the same issue as defining individual load points. I guess if you were simplifing it, a starting point wouild be 1/3, 1/4 and 1/5 spasn locations. Although you might want 1/3 span bracing on a short span and 1/5 span bracing on an adjacent longer span.
If you have access to my files, the bridge stringers are modeled as "Black Hollow Bridge 21-024".
Thanks.
Geoff Robinson - Fort Collins, CO
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