Design steel members, composite beams and built-up sections with full torsion and warping checks, then optimize member sizes automatically, all in the same 3D model as your concrete, wood and aluminum.
Built for steel structural engineers
GSE™ Steel is the steel design module of GSE™ General Structural Engineering, a 3D structural analysis and design program. Design steel and cold-formed steel members, composite steel-concrete beams and built-up sections in one environment, with section classification, resistance and stability checks, including torsion, warping and web crippling.
GSE is multi-material, so steel works with concrete, wood and aluminum in the same model. Steel frames on concrete cores and foundations, steel roofs over wood, and cold-formed steel mixed with standard steel shapes are analyzed together, and each material is checked to its own code at the same time. No exporting reactions between programs.
Analyze with static, P-Delta, nonlinear, buckling, seismic, response spectrum and dynamic time-history analysis, and design steel to AISC 360, CSA S16, AISI S100 and CSA S136, with limit states shown in colour on the 3D model.
Steel member design
GSE™ Steel classifies each section and checks resistance and stability according to the applicable standard, directly from your analysis results. Every steel member is verified in the same model as your concrete, wood and aluminum.
Sections are classified and checked for resistance and stability to the code, including singly symmetric, asymmetric and built-up sections.
Torsion and warping are part of the member check, with bending, compression, tension, shear and combined resistance calculated for steel and composite elements.
Concentrated reactions at supports are checked for web yielding and web crippling, so local web failures are caught in the same design run.
Unbraced lengths, buckling lengths and buckling factors can be set graphically on the model or in spreadsheets. Several parameters are calculated by the program.
Cold-formed steel design
Design cold-formed steel members to the North American specification: AISI S100 for the United States and Mexico, and CSA S136 for Canada. Standard and parametric cold-formed shapes are covered, with distortional buckling included in compression and bending.
Pick standard or parametric cold-formed sections, with or without lips.
Each check follows the chapters of the specification.
Built-up steel sections
Assemble built-up sections from existing steel shapes, plates and angles, and design them with the rest of your steel. Section properties are calculated with a general finite-element approach, not only simplified formulas, so complex and asymmetric geometries get accurate torsion, warping and shear-center values. Learn more about built-up steel sections in SAFI.
Properties are computed on a section mesh you can preview, from the source shapes and the assembly geometry.
Built-up sections are used in limit-state design. You set the section class for compression, positive and negative bending and weak-axis bending, and slender sections use effective properties per the design standard.
Members can be connected with continuous plates or diagonal lacing. Lacing changes the torsional and warping behaviour, while axial and bending properties come from the assembled section.
Convert a built-up section to a user-defined section for advanced stress analysis, and review stress distributions along the members.
Composite beams
Design composite steel-concrete beams with the slab, deck and studs you actually use, in the same model as the rest of your steel structure. Composite elements get the same bending, shear, torsion and combined resistance checks as every other steel member.
Optimization & results
Let GSE™ Steel optimize your member groups, then review every limit state on the 3D model and send a clean executive report, without leaving the model you share with concrete, wood and aluminum.
Select groups of members and let the program optimize their sections. Run the optimization on the whole structure or on only part of it.
See limit states in colour directly on the 3D model, or numerically in spreadsheets and reports. Analysis results are animated, with interactive result tables.
Generate customizable, complete reports in Word and Excel, or an executive summary that prints the results for the critical load combination only.
Product information
Get in touch with our specialists to see how GSE™ fits your projects, with product information, pricing and a personalized demonstration on request.
Prefer to talk? Call toll‑free 1 800 810‑9454
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Featured projects
From hospitals and distribution centres to industrial plants, engineers use GSE™ to analyze and design the structures behind their projects.
Canam Group
Canam Group
Enerkem
CIME Consultants
Multi-material design
With GSE™, steel, concrete, wood and aluminum live within a single model. Multi-material analysis and design run simultaneously, in one unified platform.
Steel and cold-formed steel members, composite beams and built-up sections, with torsion and warping checks and member optimization.
Reinforced concrete beams, columns, shear walls, slabs and foundations, with design strips, punching shear, cracked deflections and slab-on-grade analysis.
CLT, mass timber and light-frame wood design, with automated parametric wall generation, custom lay-ups and orthotropic CLT behaviour.
Aluminum structural analysis and design for aluminum members and structures.
Technical specifications
Everything GSE™ Steel supports for steel, cold-formed steel, built-up and composite members, at a glance.
| Category | GSE™ Steel |
|---|---|
| Steel design codes | USAISC 360 LRFD & ASDCACSA S16EUEurocode 3 & 4INIS 800 AISC 360 Specification for Structural Steel Buildings and CSA S16 Design of steel structures, plus Eurocode 3 & 4 and IS 800 for international projects. |
| Cold-formed steel codes | USAISI S100CACSA S136 North American Specification for the Design of Cold-Formed Steel Structural Members, for the United States and Mexico (AISI S100) and Canada (CSA S136). |
| Loads & load combinations | USASCE 7CANBCC 2020
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| Member verification |
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| Cold-formed shapes & checks |
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| Sections & steel grades |
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| Built-up sections |
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| Composite beams |
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| Optimization & results |
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| Analysis |
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| Included calculator |
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| Multi-materialSame model as steel | Concrete, slabs, foundations, wood, CLT and aluminum, analyzed and designed together with the steel structure. |
| Modeling & interface |
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| Reports & exports |
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How to get GSE™ Steel
GSE™ Steel is a design module of GSE™ General Structural Engineering. Choose your 3D analysis, add the Steel module, and the Steel Calculator™ comes with it. Then add any other material or calculator you need.
Analysis
Design modules
Calculators
Get started with GSE™
Design steel, cold-formed steel, built-up sections and composite beams with concrete, wood and aluminum in the same model, to US and Canadian codes, all in one program.
Prefer to talk? Call toll‑free 1 800 810‑9454