Intro
CIVIL NX reports beam stresses at a handful of stress points and extreme fibres, which is enough for a check but not for seeing how stress is actually distributed over a box girder, a composite section or a tapered segment. The Stress Profile Generator draws the whole picture. Pick a beam element, a position along it and a load case, combination or construction stage, and the plugin reads CIVIL NX’s forces and section properties and computes the stress over the true cross-section: normal, shear, von Mises, principal and Tresca stresses, drawn as a stress diagram along the outline, as a colour map or as a 3D view along the beam. Every profile is recomputed at CIVIL NX’s own stress points and extreme fibres and is drawn only where it agrees. A thermal tab splits a temperature profile into its restraint and self-equilibrating stresses, an SLS report checks normal stresses over many elements and combinations as a PDF or a live Excel workbook, and a bulk stress table lists the stresses of many elements for load cases, combinations or construction stages as CSV or Excel. Composite sections built stage by stage are drawn part by part from CIVIL NX’s own results for each section part. The plugin only reads the model; nothing in CIVIL NX is changed.
Developed with
- MIDAS CIVIL NX 2026 (v1.0.0)
Benefits of this plugin
- The stress over the whole section — not just at four points: the profile is drawn on the real outline of the section with its voids, with the neutral axis, the centroid, CIVIL NX’s stress points and the governing location marked, and side diagrams along the depth and the width.
- Checked against CIVIL NX every time — σx is recomputed at CIVIL NX’s stress points and extreme fibres and compared with its own beam stresses; each value must agree within 0.5 %, or the profile is refused and the comparison is shown. Where comparable stresses are not published, the plugin says so instead of claiming a match.
- Real sections from the library — DB/User shapes, value and general sections, PSC guide-curve sections and 1-, 2- and n-cell boxes, composite girders with their slab, general composite sections with a modulus per part, and tapered sections at their ends and at ¼, ½ and ¾ span. Each outline must reproduce CIVIL NX’s published area and inertias before a stress is drawn on it.
- Every kind of result — static load cases and combinations, nested combinations, envelopes (the governing member is found and drawn as a concurrent state), construction-stage results stage by stage, and moving-load and response-spectrum maxima at the stress points.
- PSC girders drawn as CIVIL NX analyses them — where CIVIL NX’s stresses come from an effective section that differs from the gross one, the profile is taken through CIVIL NX’s own stress points and labelled as such, with the gross-section difference stated.
- Shear, von Mises, principal and Tresca stresses — shear from V·Q/(I·b) with Q and b computed exactly at every cut, checked against CIVIL NX’s shear stresses where they are published. Torsion is not included, and the plugin says so on screen.
- Temperature stresses split into their parts — from an EN 1991-1-5 Type 3 profile, a user-defined profile or the temperature load defined in CIVIL NX: total, restraint, self-equilibrating, uniform and linear-gradient stresses, each checked for equilibrium, with E and α shown with their source.
- An SLS stress limitation report — normal stresses over a list of elements, positions and combinations against the limits the engineer switches on (EN 1992-2 §7.2 for concrete, EN 1993-2 §7.3 for steel), as an A4 PDF, a live Excel workbook with formulas, or CSV. No limit is applied by default, and a run with no limit is reported as such, never as a pass.
- Ready for the calculation package — PNG and SVG drawings with a title block, a PDF and Excel engineering report, HTML and CSV, and up to four load cases compared on one colour scale.
How to use this plugin?
- Open and analyse the model in CIVIL NX, then start the plugin — it connects, reads the model and shows Connected and Results available in the top bar.
- Choose the element — type an element number, part of a section name or a section number such as s2001, or select one beam in CIVIL NX and press Use CIVIL NX selection. Pick the position: I, ¼, ½, ¾ or J.
- Choose the load — search the load case and combination list; in a staged model, pick a construction stage to add its results.
Choose the stress — pick Normal, Shear, Von Mises, Principal, Tresca or Thermal from the tabs, then the component and the unit, and press Generate stress profile.
- Read the result — the governing stress, the maximum and minimum with their location, and the verification against CIVIL NX sit above the drawing; the notes and the Details link explain anything that needs attention.
Switch the view — Diagram draws the stress along the outline, Contours as a colour field, and 3D as a slice of the beam with tension in front and compression behind; drag to rotate.
Look at temperature stresses — on the Thermal tab, choose the profile (EN 1991-1-5 heating or cooling, user-defined, or the one in the CIVIL NX model) and the restraint, and check E and α for each part.
- Compare and export — Compare puts up to four load cases on one scale; Export saves PNG, SVG, CSV or the engineering report.
- Run the SLS report, if wanted — Export → SLS design report: give the elements or a structure group, the materials and the limits to apply, tick the combinations with their category, and save the PDF or Excel workbook.
Conclusion
The Stress Profile Generator turns CIVIL NX’s beam results into the stress distribution an engineer wants to see: over the real section, for every stress type, in a diagram, a colour map or 3D, and for temperature as well as loads. Because every profile is checked against CIVIL NX’s own stresses before it is drawn, and anything that cannot be matched is labelled rather than guessed, the drawings and the SLS report can go straight into a calculation package — and the model is never changed.