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Atlas TubeAtlas TubeWhere you can use this: Atlas Tube HSS Connections Hub onlyStatus: Released
This guide takes you from no account to a completed connection check.
Atlas Tube engineer Ted Goldstein walks the whole path in six minutes: navigating the Hub, starting a new connection design, entering parameters, reviewing calculations, utilisation percentages and code references, and exporting a report.

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1. Create your account

Go to connectionshub.atlastube.com and create a complimentary Connections Hub account. There is no paid tier and no trial period. You need an account before you can open a calculator or download a detail, because both are tied to your projects.

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2. Create a project

Everything in the Hub lives inside a project. A project is usually one building, one job number or one submission.
  1. From the dashboard, select New Project.
  2. Give the project a name and add your reference details (job number, client, location). These flow through to the header of every report you export, so it is worth filling them in properly the first time.
  3. Save.
Set your project defaults (design method, units, material grades) once at project level rather than per sheet. Every new calculation in that project inherits them.

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3. Add a calculation

Inside the project, select Add New Calculation and choose from the connection types available. Connections are grouped by family, for example:
  • WF to HSS shear connections
  • HSS to HSS shear connections
  • HSS to WF shear connections
  • WF to HSS moment connections
  • HSS to HSS moment connections
  • HSS to WF moment connections
  • HSS to HSS splice connections
  • HSS truss connections
  • Chevron bracing
Each connection type may offer several presets, which are named configurations of the same calculator. For example, the HSS beam to HSS girder shear calculator offers coped beam, single plate, exterior plates and through bolt presets. Choosing the right preset up front saves re-entering geometry later.

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4. Enter your inputs

Work top to bottom through the sheet. The order is deliberate.
  1. Key Properties. Member sizes, grades and orientation first, because they gate what the rest of the sheet shows.
  2. Plate, weld and bolt geometry. Plate thickness, weld size, bolt size and grade, spacing and edge distances.
  3. Applied Loads. Add or remove load cases and edit the magnitudes. Dead, live, snow and seismic are supported, and load combinations are generated for you.
The Summary section carries a live connection diagram that redraws as you change inputs. If the diagram does not look like the connection you have in mind, the inputs are wrong, not the diagram. That is the fastest sanity check in the tool.

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5. Read the results

The Summary reports utilisation as a colour-coded percentage per limit state group, for example HSS column capacity, bolt capacity, beam web capacity and minimum weld size. Expand any section to see the equations, the substituted values and the code clause each line comes from.

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6. Export

When the connection checks out, export a summary or fully detailed PDF report, and download the matching typical detail in DWG, Revit or PDF. See Exporting reports and details.

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Getting help

If a connection falls outside what the calculators support, the sheet tells you so explicitly rather than returning a silent result. At that point, contact the Atlas Tube HSS engineering team through the Hub.