Topic: Excel Spreadsheet for Beam Coping Length

[T-Square]

Hello,

Not sure if anyone has this already. I am trying to make a spread sheet in which I can enter a wide flange beam size and have it figure out the required cope length of the connecting beam. It's a matter of looking up values from another tab in the same file and performing the math as listed in the AISC detailing manual.

Excel file attached.

No, I don't have any vertical. Vanilla AutoCAD.

Any help or advice is appreciated. I am just tinkering around with this.

Thanks.

[MickD]

I haven't got time to look but another option is to have the cope length as a data field for that beam, you will still need a 'lookup' (hint) but at least you can have some round numbers instead of cope lengths like 82.5mm or similar. (sorry for my metric but you get the idea).
While 20mm gap may be a standard it's only for construction clearance so it doesn't have to be that accurate, rounded up/down to nearest 5mm is fine, in detailing, round numbers rule!

[Bob Garner]

Are you going to evolve this into a cope depth, too?  Just curious.  AISC and FEMA are fussy to see a radius at the intersection of the vertical and horizontal cut.

A fellow structural engineer has a bunch of blocks for those special weld access holes (rat holes) you have to cut in the ends of beams for the full penetration welds.


Bob G.