STEELSHAPE draws any standard AISC steel section to its true published dimensions, picked from a browsable catalogue of twelve shape families. STEELINFO reports the detailing dimensions that are not on the section but are needed to draw a connection — bolt gage, cope size, and the stiffener plate that fits between the flanges — and draws nothing.
What SteelShapes does
Twelve families:
W MC wide flange beams and columns, and miscellaneous channels
M WT miscellaneous wide flange, and tees cut from W shapes
S MT American Standard beams, and tees cut from M shapes
HP ST bearing piles, and tees cut from S shapes
C L American Standard channels, and angles
TS square and rectangular hollow sections
Pipe round hollow sections
Nothing to install. The twelve section tables are embedded at the foot of the file, so the whole catalogue is one file to ship. The dialog is held as text and written to a temporary .dcl only while it is on screen.
How to use it
- Load the routine with
APPLOAD, or put it on your support file search path. - Type
STEELSHAPEto browse the catalogue and draw a section. - Type
STEELINFOto report bolt gage, cope size and stiffener plate for a section without drawing it.
How it works
The dimensions are tabulated; the geometry is not. Every wide flange in the catalogue is the same outline with different numbers in it, so there is one function that draws a wide flange, one that draws a channel, one that draws a tee, and so on — six in total covering all twelve families.
A section is never “close enough”. It is built from the published depth, flange width, web thickness, flange thickness and fillet, so it measures correctly when somebody dimensions it.
The fillet is the part home-made steel libraries get wrong. The published k dimension is measured from the outside face of the flange to the point where the fillet runs out on the web. The fillet radius itself is therefore k minus the flange thickness.
Take k as the radius and the fillet lands in the right place at the wrong size, and the section fails to match a real one at the k-line — which is exactly where a stiffener or a coped beam has to fit.
Notes and limits
- AISC sections in imperial. For metric AS/NZS sections use Wisey’s Steel Shapes instead.
- STEELINFO draws nothing — it is there for the numbers you need before you start detailing.
- One file, no install. The tables and the dialog both live in it.
- One undo group covers the section.
Download and details
| Name | SteelShapes — draw any AISC steel section to its true published dimensions |
| Download | SteelShapes.lsp — 121.7 KB, plain AutoLISP source. Downloads directly; no zip to unpack. |
| Type | AutoCAD AutoLISP routine |
| Commands | STEELINFO, STEELSHAPE |
| Requires | nothing extra — the dialog is written to a temporary file at run time and deleted again, so there is no .dcl to install. |
| Source size | 121.7 KB, 2,551 lines |
| Error handling | Yes — a *error* handler restores every system variable it changed, on cancel as well as on error. |
| Undo | The whole operation is wrapped in a single undo group, so one U reverses all of it. |
| Compatibility | AutoCAD (any release with AutoLISP), BricsCAD, ZWCAD, GstarCAD, ProgeCAD and other IntelliCAD-based platforms. AutoCAD LT needs a LISP enabler. No .NET, no ObjectARX, no installer. |
| Author | YZ, August 2026 |
| Licence | Free to use, supplied “as is” with no warranty. |
References
- Wisey’s Steel Shapes — the metric AS/NZS equivalent
- Al’s Steel Mill — another AISC shape drawer, worth comparing
- SECTPROPS LISP — properties of a section you have drawn yourself
- More free AutoLISP routines on this site
- Wisey’s Steel Shapes — free structural steel section drawing program