Beams
A beam runs along an axis and carries a section — either a rectangle you type or a profile from the European catalogue. Where two beams meet, the joint is resolved and stays resolved.
Draw a chain
Section titled “Draw a chain”- Click Beam on the toolbar.
- Click each point of the run.
- Double-click to finish.
Unlike a railing, each segment is its own beam. That is what lets you give one span a different section from the next, and edit or delete them separately.
| Type a number + Enter | length of the segment |
| Shift | lock to an axis |
| ↑ / ↓ | justification |
Justification
Section titled “Justification”| Bottom | the axis is the underside — the default |
| Center | through the middle |
| Top | the axis is the top face |
Bottom is the default because that is the level you usually have: the underside of the beam is what sits on the wall or the column.
Offset shifts the section sideways from the axis, roll rotates it about the axis.
Sections
Section titled “Sections”| Rectangle | width × depth |
| Profile | IPE, HEA, HEB, UPE, L, RHS, SHS, CHS |
Pick the family in Section and the size in Profile. Hollow sections are built as a real ring, so quantities come from the true cross-section.
Joints
Section titled “Joints”Two beams sharing an endpoint mitre automatically, and the mitre is maintained as you move things — the geometry recomputes rather than being frozen.
Joint toggles an end between mitre and butt. The beam you click is the one that gets cut; its neighbour runs through to the far face rather than stopping square, so there is no step left in the corner.
Mitres work on profiles too, without any boolean operations: each point of the section is interpolated between the corners of the cut face. A butt is a straight cut to the neighbour’s face — not a coped fit around the profile.
Editing
Section titled “Editing”Right-click a beam → Archeform → Beam Tools:
| Join | bring two beams to their intersection and mitre them |
| Extend | run a beam out to another’s axis |
| Trim | cut a beam back at another’s axis |
| Stretch | drag one end along the beam’s own axis |
Join also works from the right-click menu when exactly two beams are selected.
Extend and Trim aim at the axis of the target, not its face — beams are centre-line objects, unlike walls and footings.
Parameters
Section titled “Parameters”| Field | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Section | Rectangle | rectangle or a profile family |
| Width / Depth | 200 × 400 mm | rectangular section |
| Justify | Bottom | where the axis sits in the section |
| Offset | 0 | sideways shift from the axis |
| Roll | 0° | rotation about the axis |
Select several beams and the dialog edits them together — changing a whole row of joists to a different profile is one operation.
Beams are marked automatically with a B prefix, grouped by section. Change a beam’s profile and the marks renumber; a mark you typed yourself is left alone.
In IFC and in drawings
Section titled “In IFC and in drawings”Exports as IfcBeam with Qto_BeamBaseQuantities and Pset_BeamCommon. Span,
slope and roll are filled in from the geometry, and a catalogue profile is
written into ObjectType so IPE 300 survives.
In plan a beam is drawn as a dash-dot axis at the storey’s plan level, over the top of the 3D — an addition to the drawing rather than a replacement, since a beam above the cut plane is usually shown as a centre line.