In the Steel Joint add-on, you can use not only the usual member types of "Beam", "Truss", and so on, but also the member type of "Result Beam", as well as cross-sections from surface elements. You should select a suitable cross-section for the result beam and then define any member openings in the surface model using the member editor.
The "Surface Contact" component in the Steel Joints add-on allows you to take into account a pressure contact between two parallel plates/member plates. Furthermore, you can optionally consider the friction between the surfaces.
The "Stub" component is available to you in the Steel Joints add-on. It allows you to extend a member using a purlin joint with another member (stub) and to connect it to a reference component.
In the Steel Joint add-on, you can arrange plates in various geometry shapes. In addition to the "Rectangle" and "Circle" shapes, the "Polygon" shape is also available. The polygonal shape is defined by entering the point coordinates.
Both optimization methods have one thing in common. At the end of the process, they provide you with a list of model mutations from the stored data. Here you can find the details of the controlling optimization result and the associated value assignment of the optimization parameters. This list is organized in descending order. You can find the assumed best solution shown in the first line. For this, the optimization result with its determined value assignment is closest to the optimization criterion. All add-on results have a utilization < 1. Furthermore, once the analysis is completed, the program will adjust the value assignment to that of the optimal solution for the optimization parameters in the global parameter list.
In the material dialog boxes, you can find the additional tabs "Cost Estimation" and "Estimation of CO2 Emissions". They show you the individual estimated sums of the assigned members, surfaces, and solids per unit weight, volume, and area. Furthermore, these tabs show the total cost and emission of all assigned materials. This gives you a good overview of your project.